Striking Chains

by Kris Schnee

The guards looked bored as they waved him on. Dominic let out a sigh of relief.

  He felt tiny, too. The buildings all had multiple floors. Everything was full of life and color, from the vegetables in windowsills to the tiles on roofs to the endless variation among the people's clothes. He took in a deep breath of city air, and gagged. Ugh! So many people together made a worse stink than his village's outhouses. Strange, too, that the people around him weren't part of his work team, weren't owned by the same Citizens, and otherwise weren't tied to him.

  Inspect and learn and observe, Jasper had said. Dominic kept having to dodge people brushing past him, who all seemed to know what they had to do. With no specific instructions, Dominic had to assign work to himself.

  He picked someone at random. "Excuse me? Do you know where the Lynx's Den is?" His throat tightened when he spotted the brand on the man's forehead. He'd stopped a Citizen for his own petty needs.

  The man glared, then glanced down at Dominic's amulet. "Two blocks that way, then right. Look for the sign."

  A few minutes later he was in a red-tiled building with a sign bearing a short-tailed cat. He tried to figure out how to pay for a few nights' stay and a meal without looking like a fool. His plain tan shirt and pants suddenly felt inadequate, too drab and simple. Even many of the Bound here had some sort of colorful sash.

  The innkeeper had a Citizen's brand but only simple brown clothes. "I'm visiting with my new master," said Dominic. "Are the inn's staff your Bound, sir?"

  "Yes. I don't see many people wandering around with that much money, treating it like they've never seen it before. Who did you say owns you?"

  Dominic sweated. "A Servant named Jasper. Here, see this necklace?"

  The innkeeper shouted for one of his Bound. "Take a look at this. Authentic?" He explained to Dominic, "She can see these things better than I can."

  The Bound girl in a grey dress smiled nervously, bowed to her master, then gestured to be shown the pendant. She cupped it in one hand to stare intently into the Weave. She glanced back up into Dominic's eyes as though comparing what she saw there, and looked back down at the wood. "I think so, sir."

  As she let go, Dominic let out the breath he'd been holding. "Magic. I should be learning that. Is there someone around here who teaches people?"

  The innkeeper frowned. "Your master should take you south to Temple Island, if that's what he's after. Around here you'd be best off hiring a Citizen tutor or borrowing his books."

  "Books," said Dominic.

  "Yes. Try the Upwell Market." He saw Dominic's blank look. "By the Seaflower? You really must be new here. And of course you can't read; I should have guessed."

  Dominic looked bashfully aside. "Yes, sir. I thought it wasn't allowed for any Bound."

  "We don't bother with that rule here. Too many places where we need a good clerk."

  You don't bother? Dominic wondered, feeling vaguely offended. Was it legal to teach Bound here, or did the rules just not get enforced?

  The inn girl piped up. "Oh! I could teach you about reading, sir. If my Citizen thinks it's all right."

  The innkeeper said, "Fine. You can keep whatever money you get from him too."

  "Thank you!" She turned back to Dominic and gave him a dazzling smile. Her tasseled grey dress wasn't much different than a Citizen's from back home, and her long brown hair, tied like a horse-tail, showed that she was no farmer who had to keep it short and practical. "For just a few coins I can show you the magic of letters instead of spells, if you're staying for a while."

  That was an easy purchase to agree to!

  * * *

  Dominic had his first lesson that afternoon, off and on. The girl, whose name was Julia, had chores and customers to attend to. She showed him a food menu, and how all the symbols were yoked together, meaningless in themselves, to carry a meaning. "Ju-Li-A," she said, drawing three marks with a pen. "See? Now pick out the symbols for Do, then Mi, Ni, and Ka with the no-vowel mark."

  Dominic soon stared at a scrap of paper with his own name on it in shaky splashes of ink. I am no longer truly Bound, he thought. He looked back up at Julia, and smiled.

  * * *

  The days had grown long. Dominic spent the rest of this one searching for the Upwell Market, until he found the city's namesake. Heard, then saw: it gurgled loudly enough to make the constant bustle of the people seem muted. Then he turned a corner and reached the plaza itself. A massive fountain poured water up into the sky in joyous arcs that caught the sun and splashed back down, like the hanging leaves of a willow. The water streamed out in six directions past six lesser wells, all ringed with metal pipes and walkways so that no one would harm the source. The plaza seethed with market stalls, each one a little festival of its own with a unique color and shape and array of fruit or cloth or meat for sale. The air here was fresher, cleaner.

  "How does it work?" he asked one of the merchants, staring not at him but at the great fountain. Women with buckets came and went from the wells like pilgrims.

  "Ah, boy, it is the work of the Boundless One! For it was He that struck the stone and called forth a lake that had never seen light." The man lifted his hands and mimed the spreading arcs of water. "Praise be to the One!" He looked expectantly at Dominic.

  "'For the One guides Three'," Dominic recited. If he was supposed to think and learn, "a wizard did it" wasn't a good enough explanation anymore, even if the spellcaster was the Servant of All who ruled the State. He said, "I'm looking to learn more about this sort of thing. About magic."

  The merchant glanced at his necklace. "I'm not the one to ask. You see the bearded Citizen over there? Marchaud's his name. Tell him the cheese-seller sent you. Meanwhile, would you be interested in these miracles of milk?" He showed off his wares.

  "Maybe later. Thanks." Dominic stepped away and explored some more. All of the merchants had the Citizens' forehead brand of the three triangles, except for the occasional Bound assistant. The man named Marchaud claimed a shady spot under a tree with bright red berries. Dominic introduced himself and mentioned the cheese-seller.

  Marchaud said, "I'm not a Servant, nor a licensed teacher. This humble Citizen barely knows magic, and deals instead in art." He pointed to the array of scrolls on his table. A few lay open, weighted with rocks against the breeze. "Would you like a painting of the coast? A woodblock print of the great victory at our Flower Walls against the western barbarians?" There was a scene where ghoulish soldiers with suns on their chests assailed the earthen walls and got stabbed in great sprays of red ink.

  Dominic took his eyes off the frightening scene. "But he said you could teach me. I can pay."

  "I could, but I can't."

  "That's nonsense."

  "You have much to learn, boy. May I show you my wares instead?" The man ignored Dominic and turned his attention to the scrolls. He brushed aside the rocks holding one of them down, then began to wave one hand theatrically over the wooden rods and paper. They moved.

  Dominic watched carefully, slipping into the trance-like state he'd been learning. The stone plaza he stood on was magically inert, but nearly everything on the table was full of the Weave. It swirled and dangled from the merchant's fingers like puppet strings. Slowly, one of the scrolls unrolled itself, revealing an image of long dark hair, haunting eyes, a smile, a slender neck, the curve of a breast --

  Then the scroll re-rolled itself with a bang. Dominic startled, and the merchant grinned. "Anything you learn from me certainly wouldn't be formal or for pay. Understand?" He began to toy with the scroll, lifting it into the air without touching it.

  Dominic tried to follow what he was doing. The merchant was touching the emerald threads in the air and tugging them toward him, but Dominic suspected half the effort was mental. There was some trick to it that he wasn't seeing. "How necessary are the gestures?"

  The art-seller turned aside and began to sort through his collection, leaving the lifted scroll wobbling in the air. He spoke with some strain and hesitation as he u
nrolled another picture with his hands. "Perhaps you'd like a scene from the Madlands' edge? Looks impressive on a wall." This one showed an island of trees, inexplicably hovering above the sea.

  All the while, Dominic watched how the Weave knotted itself around the paper that Marchaud wasn't focused on. "How could an island stay up without some mind guiding it?" He had no double meaning in mind when he said it, but noticed one immediately. The merchant wanted to teach without running afoul of some law against it.

  The man smiled back at him. "Seems impossible, and yet it does! Difficult for me to say exactly how, but I suspect that some hidden pattern of thought is indeed there. One that's focused on what experts call a root of thought, made from an idea sort of tied in on itself and looping. I'm told that people out there at the border forts study diligently at creating such a stable pattern and seeing how it interacts with nearby objects."

  They chattered about anything but spellcasting for a few minutes. In gratitude, Dominic said, "I'd like to buy that island picture, please."

  They spoke more in the process of making the sale. The art-seller said, "And that, young man, is how business is done. By the way, you're wearing that money pouch wrong. You won't have it much longer unless you tie it securely, like this."

  * * *

  Feeling pleased with himself, Dominic wandered the city and found a theater. He didn't even know what the gigantic wooden building was until the barker outside talked about the latest play. Dominic paid for space in what they called the pit. Members of the Bound crowded the dirt floor with him, and Citizens sat in elevated boxes. There was even a real stage, not just a cleared spot of village green! Dominic hardly noticed what the first half of the play was about, mainly just the fact that such things existed in the city.

  In the second half, an actor in a Servant's mask -- made inauthentic by an obvious stripe and a slightly wrong shape -- came to dispense justice for something or other. The boom of drums rolled like thunder and a slow, sinister string tune began. The audience jeered. The Servant preened and bowed with a ridiculous flourish, struck a menacing pose, then spoke in a squeaky little voice: "I bring you punishment for your horrid crime! You will all hang! You, and you! Not you; you're too cute." The audience laughed at him and he whirled to glare at them. "Silence, wretches! I mean, my lords!"

  It went on like that. Dominic couldn't help laughing at the cheap humor when the Servant decreed that everyone must kiss his "rod of office", or when he lifted the mask to pick his nose, but the whole scenario disturbed him. Just how unpopular were the Servants? Maybe he was reading too much into one play. And the Servant turned out to be a fake who got hauled off for burning at the end, not reflecting badly on the whole group. Still, he found the barker outside the theater afterwards and quizzed him about what else he had.

  "Endless excitement, boy. A thousand tales of battles, love, and scandal! But nothing tonight; you should run along to your Citizen before curfew."

  * * *

  Dominic returned to the Lynx's Den and was ambushed. "You! This is your fault!" the innkeeper said, shaking a rag in his face.

  "The rag?"

  "No, you fool. They took my serving-girl because of you."

  Dominic smacked his forehead. "Because she was teaching me?"

  "Some busybody informed on me." He gestured to the still-crowded lower floor of tables. "I should throw your things out, but you haven't got any."

  "Then I'll get her back for you. She didn't do anything wrong." It would have been perfectly fine if she'd just phrased things a different way and spoken by indirection, like the merchant Marchaud. It was absurd to punish people for being honest and direct. "Where is she?"

  "Fool. The Hall of Law is just south of the Seaflower, but you can't walk right in. You can't even be out at night." The innkeeper had talked himself down a little, and took out some of his frustration with his rag against a stubborn stain on his counter. "She's just Bound. Can't be hurt too badly for a thing like that. It'll just mean a warning and annoyance for me."

  Dominic wavered, then clutched his necklace. Think like a Servant. "I'm representing a Servant and will be one myself." Presumptuous of him, since Jasper hadn't decided whether to make him a Servant or a Citizen. "To the extent I'm still Bound, I can't be punished much for taking a walk, and to the extent I'm a Servant, I have authority. Good night." He stomped out through the inn's door, less certain than he'd sounded.

  It wasn't night yet; he'd still be in the fields if he were back at home. The city had begun to feel slanted as the shadows grew long and ate more and more of the streets. Dominic tried to walk tall and confident so that no one would question him. He knew the way back to the great magical fountain. The walk was short at his quick pace. Long fingers of shadow stretched through the nearly empty streets. Now that he was paying attention to it, the fountain itself pulsed with magical power, flowing up from the depths as though it were a tree invisible to most people. All around it, the stone plaza was magically inert but for faint threads running through the streams that the fountain fed. There was an inward and outward flow to the air as though the whole world around the city was connected to it by one vast spell.

  He reluctantly turned his attention away from the Weave to look for the Hall of Law. He found a marble building that must have been something important, though he couldn't yet read the words above the huge doors.

  A man with a lantern and axe entered the plaza. It occurred to Dominic that he hadn't seen any obvious guards inside the city, until now. Must have been a Citizen since he had something besides a knife or spear. Dominic flattened himself against a market stall until the guard had marched by. The sky was red and he wasn't sure how strictly they defined "after dark". He eyed the blocky marble hall and decided to try the front door. Hopefully once he was inside, he could look like he belonged there and speak only to whatever clerk might be on duty.

  He got halfway there, in the open, before spotting another guard. Dominic panicked. The only place to go was under one of the little bridges along the streams radiating from the great fountain. He dived hard enough to splash and skid, scuffing his hands and knees on the stone. Cold water streamed up from its underground source and splashed around him into a pipe. He coughed.

  "You, stop!" The noise had only alerted the guard, who came running closer. Dominic decided crawling into the pipe wasn't worth it, and stopped. The guard found him wet and sheepish, and glared at him. "Who's responsible for you, tunnel rat?"

  Dominic was flustered, tongue-tied and chilly. "No one! I mean, I'm with Servant Jasper. He gave me --" He fumbled for the amulet, didn't find it, missed a heartbeat, then discovered it on the back of his neck. He brought it around to show the guard. "This. See?"

  The guard scowled. "One of those. Lucky you. What are you doing? Let's see your papers."

  Dominic stood up, dripping. "The Servant didn't give them to me. I was just trying to get in to see someone at the Hall of Law, but it was getting late and I didn't want to be seen."

  "Oh, really? Let me escort you right there, then, your inquisitor-ship." He grabbed Dominic by the wrist and steered him toward the building. He unlocked the door, shoved Dominic in front of a startled Citizen clerk, and said, "Citizen Bastian! This one's broken curfew and done a little swimming. Says he's a Servant's latest stray puppy but doesn't have more than his jewelry."

  The Citizen glared at some paperwork and pushed it aside. He studied Dominic. "Thank you. Check him for weapons, then leave him to me."

  The guard manhandled Dominic, then went back out. Dominic said, "All that happened was that a tavern girl offered to show me how to read!"

  "Oh, her." The Citizen glanced toward the hallway behind him, where little could be seen but a monotonous set of doors. "Did you know she's a secret lover of Arend himself?"

  Dominic looked back blankly. "Who?"

  The Citizen laughed. "Only a test, there. You really don't know anything, if you haven't heard of High Citizen Arend. Not many people know me, though."
/>   "All right...?" The man didn't seem ready to punish Dominic.

  The Citizen said, "So. A Servant saw potential in you. But he didn't bother handing you proper papers?"

  "That's right."

  "Leaving you with nothing to prove you're not an escaped Bound but a chunk of wood. That sounds like not just any Servant. Let me guess: the name starts with a 'Ja'."

  Dominic nodded. "Servant Jasper. He's done this before? Anyway, I'm acting on his orders to learn." He thought about how to turn that to Julia's advantage. "So, you could say she was ordered by a Servant, indirectly. That makes it okay, right? Why is it wrong for her to teach me?"

  The Citizen turned away and held his hands behind his back, to face a painting of the ocean. "Because, Servant-to-be, you didn't go through the proper channels. Just as you can't take a lover without proper approval, you can't bind yourself to a teacher who hasn't been vetted. The State has an interest in education of all kinds, and we can't have relationships going on beneath our notice. My city in particular has great need of people with the right ideas pounded into their heads for once..." He faced Dominic, shaking his head. "The city's High Citizen allows me some leeway. He wants to believe nothing disrupts his equation of 'water plus sweat equals food'. If I register the girl as a teacher of reading and forget your indiscretions, will you remember that there is a reasonable Citizen in Seaflower? Someone you can work with?"

  Dominic brightened. He'd get out of this mess successfully after all! "Yes, of course."

  * * *

  "I've come to rescue you," he told the innkeeper's girl. He tried to smile, but they were in a dingy holding room and the Citizen was eager to get rid of them both.

  Julia backhanded Dominic across the face. He reeled, saying, "What was that for?!"

  The Citizen snorted. "Off you go, lovebirds. I have work to do."

  Dominic said, "Wait, sir. Did this sort of thing happen to Servant Jasper's other students?"

  The man counted on his fingers. "Of the ones I've seen? One of them helped uncover a brothel for me, but only by being found dead in it. Another had to be fished out of the Seaflower because he was so fascinated by the water-spells, then went on to become a brilliant specialist mage who works with the navy. The other recruit who came through here is best not discussed. I gather that Servant Jasper has a knack for finding high-risk, high-reward pupils and testing them. Good luck."