XII
A Line is Pulled
from Pole to Pole

Atnan worked at the market for several weeks, never venturing into the ministerial district, in part because he wanted more practice listening to imperial speech. His father’s library held many imperial texts, but the way the native speakers burbled and slurred was something else entirely. He found it equally fascinating and disagreeable, as he did the city itself.

One day, Atnan shuffled to the kitchen, exhausted. Zakinder and Glesimel were already seated, pre-dawn chores completed, ready to prepare the cart. They were used to the physical demands of their lifestyle but he was not, even though all he did was help them load and unload then walk with them back and forth between the farm and the city.

So much digging, planting, weeding, loading, hauling — when do they rest?

Fishing was hard work, of course, but farming seemed more punishment than occupation, and he wondered why anyone would do it by choice. Maybe they didn’t: They could no more fish the land than Del-folk could plow the sea.

At least I can keep up their accounts.

He thought of Glesimel struggling to stay awake long after sundown, making more errors than sums. His arrival had changed that for the better.

“Let’s take a day off,” Zakinder said to his porridge.

Glesimel frowned. “Today? With the market open?”

“Why not? The market ought to work for us, not the other way around. We’re free individuals.”

She clucked her tongue. “Even ‘free individuals’ need money, husband, and there’s nothing to be done about it.”

The two reminded Atnan of the way his grandmother and father sparred with one another verbally, though with a lighter touch.

“Oh, but I am doing something, love. I’m complaining.”

“That makes you feel better, does it?”

“Not the tiniest bit.” He grinned and twirled his mustache. “But it reminds me I’m not to blame for my own misery.”

“Seriously, Zakinder. You’re not miserable.”

“Less than some but more than others. We have walls and a floor, but we work, day on top of day, from before dawn until we collapse, and for what? The privilege of doing it again tomorrow. Not wealth or power. That only goes up.” He waved his hand up toward the ceiling. “Who chose them to be higher and us lower anyhow? Nobody asked me what station I’d like to be born into.”

Atnan ate his porridge quietly. He had no desire to enjoin the discussion, not least because of the difficulties involved. Even so, he found many points of agreement with Zakinder’s position. There was no discernible reason why they should work so hard for so little.

Glesimel said, “Kindhir says: The flower of virtue springs from the field of labor.”

“Then I must be the most virtuous man in all Kindhirak.”

Glesimel couldn’t suppress her laughter. “Most moldy-headed, more like!”

“Maybe a touch, love … sweet, beautiful, wonderful , hard-working, wise — and did I say beautiful?”

“You did, and I am, but flattery won’t run our business.”

“Business? Why, Glesimel, we’ve worked right through the last three — no four! — full moons.” He mimicked her voice, not well. “ ‘Market’s closed today, husband! Let’s slaughter that goat, fix the wobbly wheel on that cart, replace those straps on the plow — ’ ”

She widened her eyes at her husband in a way that indicated they shouldn’t argue in front of their guest. Yet after a month of living with them, he had noticed no difference between their discussions when he was present and when they thought he couldn’t hear them.

“All those things needed doing.” She started clearing away the bowls. “I’d like a rest, same as you, but we can’t afford to miss a whole market day — and I don’t sound like that.”

Zakinder grabbed her around the middle as she went by, scooping her off her feet.

“Oh, Zakinder, you’re such a child!”

“It’s how I manage.” He grinned and let her go.

Atnan shifted in his seat, uncomfortable. There was something to say, something he didn’t want to share.

Zakinder noticed, and said to him, “She’s right, of course.”

There it was. No avoiding it now. He signed in the negative, adamantly.

Glesimel stopped short, both hands full of dishes. “Oh?”

Zakinder pushed back from the table. “Careful, friend. She’s got a spoon.”

Atnan ignored him, producing two ledgers, one which Glesimel had kept, the other written in runes. He wrote “overpaid” in the margins of Glesimel’s ledger next to the harvest tax, the transport tax, and the stall rental at the market. He hadn’t had occasion to check their farm rents yet, but he suspected those were wrong as well — in their landlord’s favor.

Glesimel dumped the dishes into the washbasin by the back door. “Overpaid? By how much? Explain this,” she poked her finger onto one of the sums Atnan had marked. Her tone softened. “Please.”

Atnan took a deep breath, turned the page over, and wrote, “You recorded your entire harvest, but what you sell at the market should be deducted from your road tax, and what you don’t from your stall fee.”

Glesimel read what he wrote aloud for Zakinder’s benefit, then added, “How so?”

Atnan wrote, “Sold food goes over the road only once, and the market takes only a portion of what you sell, not all you produce. Have you deducted what you and the animals consume from the land rents as well?”

After his wife finished reading, Zakinder laughed. “You couldn’t tell one coin from another when we met you!”

Atnan stiffened and wrote, “The market has a copy of the regulations, to ensure proper administration.”

Glesimel added, “How did we not know this?”

Atnan shrugged.

Zakinder asked, “I sorry, I’m not following. Can we afford a day off?”

Atnan wrote and Glesimel read, “Yes, three or four days a month in saved fees alone. Perhaps more.”

“It’s all so complicated,” Zakinder said, shooting a compassionate glance toward his wife.

Atnan shrugged and wrote, “I think it’s meant to be fair.”

Glesimel said, “It would be fair if it wasn’t so complicated — ”

Zakinder grabbed her hands, swooping her into a dance. Her expression softened, and they danced while he sang,

We overpaid our taxes,

and now we’ll have a picnic!

It was a terrible song, but it meant a day off, which Atnan was thankful for.

Glesimel insisted that they take the opportunity to do a few light chores around the farm, but agreed to her husband’s demand for “an entire afternoon of being completely, utterly useless.”

Atnan helped them prepare a meal and load it into baskets.

“Where would you like to go?” Glesimel asked.

Atnan thought for a moment. He missed his own home and family the most, but that was no answer. He pantomimed a swimming fish with his hands.

“Excellent idea,” Zakinder said. “I’d almost suggested the same thing.” He turned to his wife. “The creek and Tortoise Hill, do you think?”

They packed up some lines and hooks and set out. With the city at their back, they crossed three neighboring fields to arrive at a small stream. They sat on rocks and fished for trout and catfish, then crossed over a small footbridge to the other side.

“There it is, Tortoise Hill!” Zakinder presented an upturned bowl of earth about the size of the roundhouse in Del if it were buried halfway in the ground and covered with grass and a few stubs of laurel and linden.

Zakinder gathered firewood while Atnan arranged some stones into a circle and Glesimel dressed the fish and skewered them on linden branches.

“The shell, do you see it?” Glesimel asked.

Atnan indicated that he did.

Zakinder finished starting a fire then clapped dust off his hands. “My grandfather used to bring me here when I was little. Do you feel the breeze?” Both arms extended, he moved his hands as though massaging the air.

Atnan did the same and felt a light breeze blowing first one way then the other.

“That’s his breath.” Seated in front of the fire, Zakinder patted the ground. “Under here is the shell of an elder tortoise.” He cracked a broad smile as he twirled the ends of his mustache. “So the story goes.”

Atnan thought of Ma-Huthra-Shen. There were other steward spirits, of course, but he had never seen any.

Glesimel said, “There were more elder beasts here before the land was cleared for the cities. When Kindhir laid the roads, they began to wander into the wilderness. All but Shigshag.”

Zakinder said, “No, not Shigshag! He was so old and heavy he couldn’t move on. As his friends left, he rumbled around the city looking for them, knocking over houses, rooting under bridges and roads for worms and snakes to eat — that’s why we don’t have any snakes, by the way.”

Glesimel turned the fish. “So Kindhir had to put him to sleep — and not only him. Wherever an elder beast stayed behind, Kindhir’s scholars came and sang them to sleep.”

The elder beasts must have been wild and strong.

Glesimel motioned for them to join her. “The followers of Mek locked hands and formed a large circle around the beast.” She grabbed Zakinder’s hand and Atnan’s hand and had them link up as well. “Then they walked toward each other to contract the circle like a noose, singing and burning incense as they went. When they got close enough, the smoke put the beasts to sleep.”

They let go and sat down.

Zakinder said, “With no more beasts tromping all over, crops filled the fields and merchants moved freely along the roads. That’s four hundred years of peace and prosperity, thanks to Kindhir.” He plopped down next to the fire and started pulling a hot fish off a linden stake, burning his fingers in the process.

Atnan’s thoughts toward the ancestors of Kindhirak turned sour. What were they thinking? Where would he be if not for Ma-Huthra-Shen? Lost at sea? A thousand other times, in a thousand other ways, she had protected his tiny little village, from fires, storms, wolves, bandits, and all sorts of pestilence. Were they without any connection to the ancestors? The spirits? No wonder this place seemed so empty to him. It was empty. Worse, they didn’t even know it.

These thoughts must have shown on Atnan’s face because Zakinder said, “Don’t be upset, friend. It’s only a story.”

That evening they ate a salad of lentils and mushrooms that Glesimel cultivated beneath a shady stump behind the house. It was a good meal, but it gave him no warm feelings of home. Everything needed salt, which was plentiful in Del, but expensive here, so they used it sparingly.

The way of life here is so arbitrary!

They sat cross-legged on rugs, transferring food straight to their mouths with bits of large flatbreads draped over their laps. Certain bowls were for steamed millet and goat cheese, shoveled with fingers, and others were for spitting out bones or seeds, still others for dipping soiled fingers — but none for drinking the soup, which was always thick and chunky.

The women wore their hair long, the men short, which made him self-conscious about his shoulder-length hair. The men wore their mustaches bushy, long, or curled at the ends, but very few had beards, none of them forked.

They gave thanks after meals, not before. They bowed when they met, but not when they left. Their speech was polite, formal even, but people expected to be bumped and shoved aside as they passed in the streets — but only by their peers, as it would be impertinent to bump someone of higher status and pitiless to bump someone lower.

These things were arbitrary to him but must have been natural to them. Nor did he hold his ways superior — there must be some convention or every daily function would be subject to debate. Through generations of small decisions, his village had arrived at one set of conventions and the cities of the empire another.

Nevertheless, he transgressed a dozen or more unspoken rules each day. His hosts overlooked every infraction, but it still felt like walking through a nettle patch.

This experience isn’t anything like I thought it would be. Why can’t life be  predictable?

He spent the cool of the evening as he often did, in the garden staring at the sky, mulling events, missing Del, considering the scrolls.

His thoughts wandered to the smallest, most puzzling scroll, its signs arranged in rings, not rows. Each ring was divided into numbered segments: five in the innermost ring, then eight, ten, and twenty-nine. Each segment bore a unique symbol and a number, and the topmost segment in each ring was red. He imagined a tiny figure walking along the rings, a road that led nowhere but around again, counting off the steps.

But which steps?

It might be some kind of almanac, the rings marking days for planting, harvesting, or some other similar activity. The number twenty-nine made him think of a table of the moon, one segment per day, but the numbers ten, eight, and five made no sense to him on that account unless they were some irregular kind of week, misaligned with the moon.

He checked the sky: It was a new moon, and the stars were out early. As he looked upward, he counted off the days he had spent in Nepsilam without completing his errand. As he counted, he imagined the wheels of the heavens spinning, day by day.

Just then, a stroke of light inscribed the sky from the sea to the mountains and ended in a flash. Along that line lay the city and the Academy of Mek. He took it to be a sign, pointing to where he already should have gone.

The next months were busy for Taláni. The barges never stopped, bringing workers and supplies, sending out raw materials to be shaped into implements of war. They cleared the underbrush and hewed trees into logs, splitting them into planks to build walls, paths, bridges, and platforms all around the citadel.

Lapsala’s Citadel was not a single building but a thick wall partitioned into rooms. A courtyard stretched inside the ring, the stump of a gigantic tree in its center, which Melíksi declared was the largest living thing in the world.

It was unclear what sort of tree it might have been; its bark was smooth and its trunk bulbous. Fallen leaves littered the courtyard, all brown and single-bladed with serrated edges, each one longer than his arm and harder than boiled leather. He picked one up and turned it over in his hands. It was light but stiff. He tried to bend it and couldn’t.

Armies of carpenters, stonemasons, and other workmen swarmed the site, clearing away brush and piling up loose stones while Melíksi directed their work, decked in a heavy smock and work boots as though she were a common laborer.

“Come with me, nedóru,” she said, dragging him along by the arm. “I have someone I want you to meet.”

They exited through a portcullis and walked down a tree-lined path toward the faint echoing sound of hammer blows. The hammering grew louder as they approached a ramshackle building littered with tools and broken stones.

Out front, a strong-shouldered smith was hammering out a sheet of copper with a bronze club over a smooth stone. A thick leather mask, featureless except for a narrow slit across the eyes, obscured the smith’s face.

Melíksi tapped the smith on the shoulder as they approached. The tool dropped with a loud clunk and the smith ripped off the mask to reveal a sweaty, soot-smeared face almost as leathery as the mask.

Surprised, Taláni looked into the face of a woman, stout, broad-shouldered, with close-cropped hair, narrow eyes, and a face like a stone block.

She collapsed on one knee with both hands clasped and touching her forehead. “I greet the High Queen of Kwelitánsit.”

Taláni raised an eyebrow at his mother.

She took the woman by the hand and guided her to her feet. “Rise, Nos-tolóri-nu’ulúri.” A Myriad she Creates. “Greet the High King as well.”

She dipped and touched her forehead again. “Your servant.”

“You are a smith.” Taláni was unable to mask the surprise in his voice. He picked up the bronze tool. “A strong one.”

“With respect, High King, but … smithing is something I do, not something I am. I make what needs making, discover what needs discovering, and invent what needs inventing.”

“Your shaping stone.” Taláni gestured to the anvil. “What sort of material can withstand such punishment?”

“Basalt, from the mountains. Like granite, but the crystal grain is smaller and tougher. I spent the better part of a month grinding it into shape.”

“You are skilled.” Taláni ran his hand over the anvil which was as smooth as glass.

“The spirits gave me the stones to pound, and hands to pound with. The rest is patience — and sweat.”

“Can you make weapons? Armor? Shields?”

“If it can be made, I can make it — sometimes even if it can’t.”

The giant leaves that littered the citadel came to Taláni’s mind, and he was about to ask Uluri if anything useful could be built from them, but Melíksi said, “I am needed elsewhere. Uluri, show him around. I expect you two have much to talk about.”

They both bowed as she left, and Uluri led Taláni on a tour around her workspace, gesturing toward each point of interest as they walked. “You saw the smithy. Foundry there. Distillery over there, and behind it the tannery. That building is for storing tools. Most of this over here is junk until I think of something better to do with it.”

Taláni was as much shocked by her casual familiarity as he was by her sex. “Has my mother told you much about our plans?”

“Not interested in politics.”

“We will need weapons.”

“Oh, yes!” Her expression was eager. “I started on that weeks ago. Have you seen the leaves of the great tree? A wonderful material, isn’t it? Unlike any I’ve ever seen! I have several applications in mind — once I figure out how to cut it.”

“I have every confidence you will. What about transportation?”

“We’ll need various kinds: Barges, sledges — Kindhirak has roads, so carts and wagons are an option,” her eyes widened, “chariots, maybe.”

“The Scrapers defend their cities with walls and earthworks.”

“Ah, yes! For that, we need siege engines, ladders, portable bridges, battering rams — shovels and picks for undermining — ”

Her enthusiasm for the practical aspects of warfare impressed him — or was it merely an interest in things to make? Either way, it could be harnessed.

She hitched up her skirt and hooked her thumbs into the straps of her leather bib. “Each city will be a project unto itself.” She squatted down and signaled Taláni to do the same.

Shaping dirt into a small ring, she placed a pebble outside. “Earthworks, they’ve got a slope to them, see? You have to climb up, and you make a pretty target all the way.” She shoved sticks into the miniature fortification. “Pickets, moats — more for slowing you down than stopping you.” She traced out a little trench around the inside of the ring with two fingers. “Ditches, moats, pits. All completely different than walls.”

They stood and Uluri dusted herself off. “Straight up and down.” One hand held vertical, she attacked it with the other. “Three choices: Up and over, underneath, or through. Or around — I guess that’s four. Gates are always the strongest and weakest parts.” She inhaled through her nose, which whistled. “I’m rambling now. Anyhow, this is all doable — just problems to solve.” She wrinkled her face, revealing a gap-toothed grimace she may have meant as a smile. “Solving problems is what I do.”

“Have I seen everything?”

“Not at all! I saved the best for last.”

She led him through a series of fences and thorn-hedges to what she called “the farm,” a corral so sturdy it looked like a small fortress. From a small observation platform, they watched two giant beasts grazing below, each the size of ten oxen, a heavy single horn between their eyes.     

“Horn-beasts from over the mountains. I found them as calves and raised them. That one’s Storm and he’s Thunder.”

“Are they  — ”

“Docile? Yes, with me. I know how to make them sleep — the vapors of certain plants.”

“Are you also a shepherd, and a herbalist?”

“Ha, no! Well, as needed. These are siege weapons. See how they come with a built-in battering ram? Armor, too — no spear can pierce that hide.” She grinned. “Ask me how I know.”

“Can you  direct them?”

“My current thinking involves a long chute and driving them through with fire. All I have to do is mark the target — ” She slammed her fist into her hand.

They climbed down and started heading back toward the smithing stone.

“My mother says the spirits intend to give us a gift and to deliver it here at Kalparaana.” He clapped Uluri’s shoulders. “I think she was talking about you.”

Taláni directed the workmen to pound staves into the side of the giant stump, spiraling up and around to make a narrow stair-ladder. Up top, he had them build a sturdy deck with rails. From this vantage, he could see the entire complex, a wheel of stone pavement surrounded by eight smaller wheels, in each of the cardinal directions, all watered by slithering culverts.

On the deck, he erected a bower using the giant leaves as shingles. Most nights he slept up there under the stars; rather, he lay awake in the hammock or paced the deck boards.

His preference was to improvise, but the next phase required careful planning. A tangled thicket of decisions stretched before him. If he went one way, branches fell off and new ones emerged. If he went a different way, this changed that, and that changed the other thing — round and round the circle went.

The goal was clear, but the steps eluded him.

On one such night, he lay on his cot staring at the sky and thinking about fording the Greater River with twenty thousand men or more. The gorges upriver were an impassable barrier, so they would head down to Kelwath where the river widened to snake across the gravel bars.

Speed. Surprise. That was the key. The permanent defense forces in the cities were small, ill-equipped. If he gave them time to raise a proper army, they would overpower him.

The roads that spidered throughout the land worked to their advantage. He could rush from Kelwath to Kusumnu. Beyond that, his view was murky. Occupy Kusumnu and fan out? Leave it and press on to the next city? Which city was next?

It was a new moon, and the air was crisp and cold. He wondered how this view of the sky would have appeared when the tree was whole, framing the bright stars in its massive branches.

His paternal grandmother had once told him how the spirits of unborn babies crawled down from the stars along the trunk, into their mother’s wombs, waiting to be born. “When you’ve lived long enough, they plant you like a seed, but instead of growing up, you follow the roots down to the Silent Lands.” She wiggled her wrinkled old fingers like little worms. “If you lived well enough and you want to live again, the spirits will turn you into a firefly to rise up from the hearth fires.” Her fingers fluttered upward. “Whenever it rains, the fireflies ride the lighting back up to the stars until they’re ready to climb down again.”

His mother intervened, and that was the last time he spoke to his grandmother. He wasn’t old enough at the time to realize how abhorrent his mother’s philosophy was to his father and all his relatives.

How this place infects the mind! My mother calls it a convergence of meridians, but all I feel is turbulence — all the streams that flow in and out of here war with one another.

He wondered if one of the stars was his grandmother. She seemed the kind of person who would want to live as many times as possible.

I need a sign! Are we following the true spirits? Or —

A distant wailing sound interrupted his thoughts. At first, he thought it was a wolf, but then a bright streak slashed through the sky overhead and exploded in the mountains. A loud crack like thunder rolled across the marsh, followed by a blast of wind that rattled the trees and knocked him off his feet.

The camp boiled over with noise. Questions bounced from watchman to commander: What was it? Where did it land? Is everyone here and safe?

Elated, Taláni shouted, “It has arrived! It has arrived!”

He skipped down the ladder, shouting at everyone to move, to fetch his mother, to fetch Uluri, to get ready to come with him to the mountains.

They slathered torches and set out, twenty or so strong, Taláni bounding out ahead. He had been wrong to doubt the spirits. He wouldn’t insult them further by letting their gift rot in the mountains.

Mekvat reclined in a spacious white-pillared room overlooking Khet Manak and the sea beyond. His host, a willowy clothier named Givlet, strolled through the room, making sure his robes caught all the best light the late afternoon sun had to offer, holding a glass goblet of red liquor in various absurd positions to cast its light on his carefully coiffed face.

Fundraising had always been a chore Mekvat was happy to delegate, but he was good at it, given the right project. This was the fourth — no fifth! — noble he had visited that week, and he had secured funding commitments from all of them.

“I am elated you came to see us, Minister,” Givlet said after framing himself in front of an open balcony with the sea behind. “How do you find our city? Has it won you over?”

Mekvat raised his glass in salutation and took a sip that tasted like cherries, plums, and fire. “It has its charms.”

“Yes, yes! But I find there are too many people here of the … rustic type. Practical sorts who churn their own yarn and spin their own butter. Oh, they do raise the bile in me, but now you are here from the capital — the Sage Prime, no less! I have been to all the cities. Have you? Shiriwak is a good place to live, but honestly, I wouldn’t visit. You have met our queen, yes?”

Mekvat swirled his drink.

Not his first glass, apparently.

“I have spoken with her. Only briefly.”

Givlet scoffed. “I see her all the time. She’s boring, don’t you agree?”

“There is a certain simplicity about her.”

“Gah, yes! That’s it exactly: Simplicity. A ruler should be complicated, no? Sumptuous! A pageant for the senses. A reflection of our collective ambitions! This queen of ours? Dull, disfigured, and dressed like a common field hand.” Givlet threw himself into the cushions beside Mekvat nearly upsetting both their drinks in the process, then leaned in to whisper conspiratorially, “It is said our lady shuns the company of men, while she lavishes her, ah, attention on the priestesses of Etreya.” He swigged his drink. “They have teeth, you know. That’s how she lost the,” he tapped his wrist.

Mekvat cleared his throat. “I am only a visitor here,” he demurred. He would only dive into the local gossip as deep as necessary to complete his errand, and no further. “Speaking of embellishment, you know this monument of mine — to Mek, rather — will be the most dazzling structure ever erected.” He waved his hands around the room. “I take you for a man of refinement. You should know, I have already secured monetary commitments from some of your compatriots.”

Givlet’s brow furrowed. “How vulgar.”

A miss. Time to aim for a new spot.

“Kindhir says: The lord may buy the fields, but the farmers live and die there.”

Givlet sipped his drink, curious.

“I have plenty of coins. What I need now can’t be bought. As a man of taste and refinement, your contribution could be unique — ”

Just then, a commotion began in the adjoining entryway: a servant shouting, some light scuffling, and Mekvat’s name tumbling from the mouth he wanted least to hear in that moment.

“You can’t — ” the servant said, backing into the room.

“I already have.” It was indeed Chyermut, the whole block of her, and she barked at Mekvat as though scolding a misbehaving child. “Minister, you are summoned to Limiya, immediately.”

Givlet stood and sloshed his drink in her direction, but his protestations made no difference. “I am authorized to make arrests,” she said.

“Oh, that won’t be necessary.” Mekvat handed his glass over to the servant and bowed to Givlet. “Duty calls! I do hope we can meet again, under less demanding circumstances.” He shot an annoyed glance at Chyermut, who remained indifferent.

The sun began to set as he arrived in Limiya’s throne room, breathless and obeisant. “I bow eleven times — ”

“You have been soliciting the noble families,” she said down to him.

“I have, Heptarch.” Still kneeling, he glanced up at her.

“How disappointing. I expected an ornate lie.”

“I wouldn’t dare, Heptarch.”

“And yet you dare defy me. Oh, you capital people! Do you not know how to be predictable?” She didn’t bother to hide her anger, leaning forward to the front edge of her seat.

“I am confused, Heptarch. Did you not say you wished them included?”

“On my terms, not yours. You have shamed me in front of my rivals. Do you not realize?”

“Shamed? By Mek’s eyes! My only thought — ”

Limiya silenced him with a gesture. “Your improvisations may be tolerated in Nepsilam — celebrated even, spirits help them — but I find you and your antics insufferable.” She leaned back in a way that made the wood groan, filling the chamber with the sound.

That had to be intentional! Why is she so displeased?

Just then, a commotion arose in the streets outside: drums, chanting.

At Limiya’s gesture, an attendant opened the doors overlooking the courtyard below and relayed the scene. “A man is marching around the courtyard, shouting through a foreman’s cone. He says Mekvat and our lady are in cahoots and they are scheming to overthrow the nobility. Workers were hired back at lower wages and left unpaid. He says our lady is undermining the traditions of Shiriwak, that the monument is a lie, and everything our lady does is a fraud. What he said next is too indelicate to repeat.”

Cahoots? How else does major construction proceed in this backward city except by working with the magistrate?

Limiya stood. “Up to this point, I had been searching for a way for the project to continue — perhaps with yourself in a purely decorative role.”

“You are angry, Heptarch. Kindhir says — ”

“No, Minister. I was angry before. Now my people are marching in the streets.” Calmly, she stepped down from the dais and glided toward the doorway, indicating he should follow. “It is such a fragile thing.”

“Power, Heptarch?”

“No, liberality. Peaceful order and functioning governance. Not power, but its proper exercise, nurturing and maintaining all the myriad connections that sustain the circle of a community when at every moment it threatens to collapse.”

Mekvat peeked outside. The shouting man was now standing on a makeshift platform, waving a quarryman’s hammer and leading the crowd in a jeering chant.

“I was impatient,” she said. “I thought I could leverage your ambitions against my own and yield a greater increase on the legacy that was handed down to me.” She tapped her fingernails against her wooden arm idly as she stared outside, voice rising steadily. “A city, Minister, is a delicate tapestry, an embroidery of agreements and negotiations, woven generation upon generation, ruler upon ruler — then comes the Sage Prime of Mek, recklessly yanking on the ravels!”

Just then, a fireball streaked across the sky, lighting up the entire audience chamber. They moved away from the doorway. Outside, the crowd cheered and the drumming increased.

By Mek, they will take this as confirmation that everything this man says is true. This is bad for Limiya and worse for me. Yet she must know: I am critical to Nepsilam, and the favor of Nepsilam is critical to her city.

“You are finished,” she said through clenched teeth. “Were there no repercussions, I would feed you, limb and kidneys, to the crowds myself. No, my city is too precious to risk the peace with Nepsilam over something as worthless as your life.” She took a step toward him. “Nevertheless, there will be no monument to Mek in Shiriwak, because there will be no followers of Mek. Not so much as the strap of a sandal will defile any stone of this city, from now until the end of the age.”

Mekvat considered his next words carefully, speaking in a low voice. “Reconsider, Heptarch. I beg you. I will leave quietly, and endure whatever humiliation you wish to heap on me. Clearly, we do not work well together, but remember the decrees — the Academy of Mek is an institution of Kindhir, and — ”

Limiya whirled, striking his jaw with her wooden arm. Pain shot through his head and settled in his neck. She wouldn’t dare murder him, but might she imprison and torture him? She might be able to get away with that, for a while, for long enough.

She spoke in even tones. “Again you misunderstand, Minister. There will be no entreaty because there will be no law. My wishes will be whispered among my partisans and defenders, and be warned: I have an absolute, unquestionable prerogative to pardon any crime that happens within the walls of my city.” She turned her back on him. “Go, make your escape, in disguise if necessary. I am about to name you the villain. If the crowds find you, I will not intervene.”

Mekvat scuttled out, bleeding from his lip. As he left, he saw her whispering to herself as she clutched the end of her sleeve in her one healthy fist and stepped onto the balcony to address her people.

Spirits help this naive woman — if she is so foolish she cannot tell her allies from her enemies, then I say let them topple her and spare themselves further misery!

That night, Mekvat escaped with the dozen-odd scholars in the local academy of Mek, all disguised as farmers. As they journeyed toward the capital, they stayed wherever their skills would be appreciated, some in Kusumnu, others in the smaller towns along the way. Here a physician, there an herbalist; here a mosaicist, there a timbrelist. Mekvat swore them all to silence in return for his most glowing recommendations. By the time he reached the capital, alone, he was thoroughly demoralized.

Selolo snuggled under the bearskin. The villagers had a habit of eating outside together during the new moon to watch the stars. Clouds usually ruined the view, but that night was clear.

They sat outside the roundhouse, Hennamis on one side of her and Betalia on the other, watching the fire crackle. The sisters tended to skip these fireside meetings, but Selolo enjoyed listening to the people talk.

I wonder if the clouds calm the people here — without the bright sun to arouse their passions?

The light here was dim, like the forest, but diffused by clouds instead of leaves.

The same, but not the same: The forest is close and quiet, and the sea is so wide and never silent!

“The baby,” Hennamis said to her. “Coming soon.”

“Cold , in the sky? Also?” Selolo asked.

“Yes. Winter, coming soon. Not too cold here, by the sea.” Hennamis patted her arm.

Selolo sipped the hot bush-bark and honey beverage Hennamis had given her, which helped, though the flavor was unpleasant.

One of the elders asked Omrik if his monument would be done before the sea dried up, to some laughter.

Omrik poked the fire. “I’ve got most of the pillars carved, and the five big ones are painted.”

The shower of sparks reminded Selolo of a story about fireflies. Had her mother told it? Or Mirílna?

“Pillars?” she asked, repeating the unfamiliar word back.

“Oh, you haven’t seen them? I’m erecting a monument, over on the cliffside where the trade boats come in. To mark the village and honor the ancestors.”

Selolo only caught every third word or so, and asked Betalia to repeat in jargon.

Her speech is clear and careful — but then she is the headman’s wife.

Barlas would have been her first choice, but he wasn’t around. She wondered why.

“Your old people,” she said to Omrik. “Tell me.”

Two winds arose in her mind, opposing, swirling: The first whispered that she didn’t belong in this alien landscape, the other whispered that she could, if she were willing to change, to become alien herself.

If I am to live here, I should know their stories — but I don’t even know my own stories!

“In the oldest days, there were five clans.” Omrik counted on his fingers. “Ram, Heron, Dragon, Wolf, and Whale. Each with a corresponding virtue and rune. I have five tall pillars for them, which I will place in a circle. Then around them, the twenty, four sub-clans each. Once they called this the Fyrean Knot, bound by a common language and devotion to the Five Spirits. One circle.” He laced his fingers together. “One community.”

Selolo waited for Betalia to interpret for her. “Not five-and-twenty today?” She was aware of five or six clans and assumed there might be as many as eight or nine, but the village was much too small for twenty-five.

“No, not since before Kindhir’s time,” Omrik said. “Many are lost. Some we only know by stories and legends. We’ll put up pillars for them all, to memorialize them — including the ones we don’t know anymore.” He started naming off clans again, too fast for Selolo to follow. Various villagers chimed in to fill the gaps.

Omrik tugged at his beard. “Atnan told me about a boundary stone he and Barlas found a while back. It had all the signs on it, but he didn’t recognize them all. Drew them best he could, from memory. I went through all the oars and staves in the roundhouse, every scrap of leaf, even the old slates — just the sort of thing he would enjoy! — but only came up with twenty-four in the end.”

Midway through Omrik’s speech, Barlas arrived with a basket of small green apples. This late in the year, he must have searched for a long while. He passed the basket around and sat down next to Betalia. “Look, the first star is out!”

Everyone cheered.

“Ah, Nan,” Layram said. “Beauty is always first.” He gestured toward his wife.

“Wisdom comes later,” Betalia said.

Layram swept his hand in a wide arc toward the sky, now deep violet-blue fading into black. “While the sun-deer travels beneath the world, red like blood, the Five Spirits wander the night sky. All the other spirits are locked in unchanging circuits, but the Five roam free.”

Stars twinkled into view as the villagers sang about Nan arranging the other stars into ranks, dividing the trees and plants into gardens, animals into kinds, men and women into families.

This reminded her of Huma-Lapsala and songs her mother had sung, which should have put her at ease; instead, somehow, it led her to resentment toward these people. How dare they live at the edge of the world and sing songs that reminded her of her lost mother? How dare they keep such treasures that had been stolen from her?

The two winds blew in opposition, harder than ever.

As the song ended, the shining band of stars stretched across the sky. They called it the river-in-the-sky and believed their ancestors were there, among the spirits.

Are my ancestors there as well? Will I join them? Are they instead beneath the world, in the roots of the trees? If I live here too long, which ancestors will I join? Whichever will take me?

Barlas spoke first, still staring at the sky, entranced. “Twenty-four.”

“What, Barlas?” Betalia asked.

“Clans. Should be twenty-five, but one is lost  … ” He trailed off, staring at Selolo in a way that made her uncomfortable, exposed, judged. “What if they ain’t, though? We have a twenty-fifth — the sisters, eh?”

No one spoke. The two streams pulled harder. She wanted to stay, but to stay the same.

Just then, a deep rumbling groan came echoing over the hills outside the village. By now she knew the bear-queen’s noise, but still, it startled her. Not long after, a wolf howled in the distance, followed by barking coyotes and yelping foxes.

One of the villagers stood to speak, but before he could begin, a collective gasp ran through the group. A seam of light ripped across the starry night from sea to mountains, where it disappeared in a flash.

Selolo surveyed the faces around the fire, all frozen in astonishment.

First the animals, and now the spirits as well?

Layram moved to the center of the circle, his shadow looming in front of her, and tapped his oar solemnly on the stone patio three times. The other men stood and answered.

Will they put us out of the village now?

“Is this the sign?” Betalia asked.

“Yes,” he said. “In all my many, many, years I have seen no sign so clear as this. How can we defy the will of both nature and heaven?”

What if nature and heaven are wrong? What if the sign means we should leave? Was it a mistake for me to press them to let us stay so quickly? The sisters! I talked them into it. What if I’m wrong? When spring comes, we may wish something else for ourselves, and will we now be obligated to stay? Have we traded one slavery for another?

“What’s wrong?” Hennamis asked her.

Selolo sniffled, leaned her head against the old woman’s shoulder. “Nothing,” she said. “Nothing at all.”

Keep Reading >