The Weight of the World

by Tom Toner

  There had been thunder, for the second time in her life, as if it always accompanied great change. She’d gone out into the night to listen as it gurgled over the hills, closing her eyes in the darkness.

  “This way,” the old man said, working his way through the crowd to the door of an inn where some potted bay trees grew.

  Eranthis knew the place well. It was called the House of the Homeless, though it possessed no sign; the best in Mersin. At the painted doorway, her companion laid down his cane and, watching that she hadn’t got lost among the throng of sailors, merchants and messenger creatures, lowered himself contentedly onto a stool. Eranthis followed through the crowd and joined him at the table, glad of a chance to sit and avail herself of some shade.

  They sat for a while in pleasant silence, notably early for their appointment, listening to the musical calls of the market. After some time spent watching the world pass by, she turned to the Amaranthine, who was helping himself to a drink from the bottle he always carried.

  “I’ve never seen it this busy,” she said, watching him spit into the jug on the table. “It’s as if the Jalan aren’t even here.” As she spoke she could see one, head and shoulders above the crowd, dawdling at the edge of the causeway. The giant watched the comings and goings of the Southerly people just as she did, until finally their eyes met.

  Jatropha shrugged. “The ports have reopened. Life goes on. The stars twirl in the heavens and the currents swirl in the depths.”

  Eranthis nodded, ceasing to listen after twirl, studying the yelling merchants in their open-fronted tents. Easterners—those of the Eleventh, Twelfth and Thirteenth Provinces—were a good deal scrawnier than Tenthlings, narrow-limbed and slender-faced. They wore the colours of barter, blues and greens that rippled to attract attention. Occasionally a man or woman would dye golden-white at a sale: the colour of wealth, the colour of the First. She looked at the piled goods on display—rare seeds and grown stuffs, paints and dyes, plastic and wooden puppets, ring books, jewellery of every kind, gameboards, cloth. A man further along the street sold finger rings, his gaily-striped tent attracting plenty of attention.

  “Have I got time to . . . ?” She pointed to the market as she stood, waiting for Jatropha’s answer. He nodded, seemingly distracted by the view. “I’ll be here.”

  Yes, you always were, she thought as she crossed the street, the throng paying her little attention as it crowded between the market stalls, misted in foreign perfumes. She pushed her way to the front of the ring seller’s counter, eyeing the jewellery. No trinkets of high quality were made in the Tenth; you had to go as far west as Izmirean, the Province’s only other port, or across the sea to Kipris Isle, and even then the quality of the pieces was usually low: nothing but hammered tree metals and semi-precious stones.

  The jeweller gave her a genteel nod. She smiled back, bending to sift through the baskets and buckets of rings. Though many were similar, none were exactly the same. Hoops of copper and gold were mingled with silver, iron and plain steel—what they called “unstained” in the Tenth—set with simple, commonplace stones like pink coral and fly amber. The trader raised a finger, seeing her disappointment, and opened a large chest at the back of the stall near where he slept. He pulled out a black velvet pouch and untied it theatrically, tipping some of the contents into his bony hand. Eranthis peered at the treasure.

  “Mono Krazavaar,” she said carefully in what she hoped was Thirteenth.

  The trader cocked his head.

  “Very beautiful?” she tried again, this time in Tenth.

  “Ah,” he said. “Mingo Kravus!”

  “Mingo Kravus,” she repeated, pointing to the rings.

  “I couldn’t agree more,” said a thick, purring voice like a plucked cello string. Eranthis looked up into the massive, toothy face of a Jalan soldier as he loomed over her. His tufted ears flattened as he smiled, revealing incisors carved with decorative scenes.

  “Az shto je kopyo za ney,” he said to the trader, reaching into a pocket in his belt. He wore the vestiges of some old, sooty plate harness inscribed with swirls of patterns across the belly.

  The trader bowed his head, rummaging beneath his desk to bring out some paper books and a pen. He glanced at Eranthis as he began to write. “The gentleman wishes to buy them for you.”

  Eranthis stared at the pile of rings, now deposited on the table beside the trader’s ledger. “All of them?”

  “Every one, my dear,” the giant said, sliding a long, rumpled piece of blue silk over to the trader. “I couldn’t decide which would suit you best.”

  Her eyes went again to the Jalan’s teeth, trying to make out the chiselled image. In place of fear, she felt only curiosity, not caring that her reaction would only encourage him further. “May I see those?”

  His smile broadened, the mottled lips peeling back to show filed molars like fangs further inside. “Be my guest.”

  Eranthis leaned forward, registering the ethanol-tang of Junip on his gusting breath. His tongue slithered lasciviously at his lips, a little drool slopping at her feet. She squinted, seeing at last that the man’s teeth were decorated with a couple of scenes from Dorielziath, a popular epic from the East, with lines of verse that she hadn’t spotted at first carved down the canines. She took her time reading them, knowing the Jalan was tiring of her curiosity and relishing her brief command of him. The jeweller pretended not to watch. She felt sorry for the poor Easterling and decided that on her return she would buy a few of the plainer rings to make up for the scene at his stall.

  “Like what you see?” the Jalan growled, snatching up the bag of rings impatiently as he was offered them and holding them aloft.

  Eranthis shrugged. “I’ve seen better.”

  He reached quickly for her, his many fingers grasping at air as she stepped nimbly back into the crowd. The giant scowled and lumbered forward, intent on his prize, before stopping suddenly in his tracks.

  Eranthis could never quite tell what they saw when they fell under Jatropha’s spells, knowing only that it was always different, always personal. The Jalan’s great eyes widened, his furious expression growing suddenly helpless. His ears swept forward to flatten against his temples as he cried out. Much of the crowd turned to stare, seeing only a shrieking, hysterical Jalan surrounded by onlookers keeping a safe distance. Eranthis could almost pity the man if she’d not felt instinctively that he’d butchered people on his way to the Tenth. She stepped away into the crowd, hearing the screams turn to sobs. Usually they took weeks to recover, if they ever did.

  She returned to her stool beside Jatropha, who had ordered wine. “You encouraged him.”

  Eranthis glanced at the Amaranthine, taking a glass for herself. “He came to me, uninvited.”

  “You don’t understand the Jalan.”

  She downed her wine in one gulp, scowling at him.

  At the harbourside, Eranthis sat to wait a while longer as her chaper-one greeted old friends, dangling her legs over the growth-stone sea wall, unbothered by the fish-sellers. Looking along the coast at a sea the colour of bright peridot, her gaze following the surf and the grown towers of private, jungly estates, she felt all at once a little girl again, out and about with her father. At last, her eyes returned to the familiar sight of the bright red, four-masted barques standing sentinel out to sea.

  She had heard of the moving paper city that had conquered Provinces, but looking upon the ships of the Oyal-Threheng admiralty now she didn’t think she could be more impressed. They towered, floating crimson-painted fortresses five or six storeys high, strung with shredded banners that hung still in the windless day. Great naval guns stationed on the forecastles pointed out to sea and into the port, their immense barrels usually shaded beneath triangular paper sails almost a hundred feet tall at their cornices.

  Today the sails were rolled, the barques a semi-permanent feature of the Southern Provinces as they watched over the Oyal-Threheng’s new annexe. Eranthis could just make out minuscu
le figures making their way up and down two of the masts as her mind touched on the intervening months, wondering for the thousandth time what her old friend Lycaste would have made of it all, not smiling at the thought.

  Jatropha had promised, when at last his business was over, to make enquiries. If Lycaste was out there somewhere, he would be found. Nobody with a face like his could vanish easily, not even in the underpopulated and dangerous Provinces to the west, though he could surely not have got that far. Indeed, Jatropha said, it was strange—and worry-ing—that they still hadn’t heard anything on the Province rumour mill. Eranthis knew the saying no news is good news but no longer believed it.

  The Immortal was talking to a pleasant-looking Tenthling she vaguely recognised. The two were moving along the stalls, apparently taking a deep interest in the shaded mounds of fish caught that day, the Tenthling taller than Jatropha by three or four feet. She knew better than to join them; not from fear of reprimand, but rather the knowledge that important bargaining for their trip ahead was likely going on. If Jatropha needed her council, he would ask for it.

  A little sailed gondola took them out across to the waiting ships, passing over clear, green-tinted sands where no fish swam. There hadn’t been any more sightings of the huge pale shark—the Echelussiac, as Jatro-pha called her—now the year was drawing to a close. The Amaranthine said she’d withdrawn to hotter waters and richer pickings further south but might return in coming months, especially if the Jalan continued throwing their slops into the sea.

  The boat rocked as it entered the great enclave of ships, sliding into shadow beside the first of the shining red hulls. They pulled around the great bulwark of the guardship and she sat, smiling at the Thirdling manning the oar. The flagship came slowly into view, a fortress rising out of the sea.

  Eranthis forgot to breathe, eyes widening in the shade. The mighty capital ship had been mostly hidden from view by the protective diamond formation of the other three galleons, only its masts—higher than the others by twenty feet or so—rising above the tangled web of rope and rolled sails, its shadow darkening the sea like a storm. Eranthis felt cold all of a sudden, understanding in the darkness cast by the ship the colossal gravity of the task at hand. She rubbed her arms, not so excited any more to be going aboard.

  The ship’s prow rose over them, a coiled mass of sculpted wooden faces glowering down at her. The giant heads gleamed in the reflection of the ruffled water, all lacquered in bright blues and reds and golds. Their boat passed beneath yet more, full animal figures standing sentinel in their hundreds along the ship’s flank, decreasing in size to cursed folk and Monkpeople at the distant stern. Every now and then, the great bands of wood that covered the hull had been replaced either with brighter segments of painted planking or dull, riveted strips of lead. She glanced up through the tangled forest of carved figures, following the trail of the ship’s knotted rigging, and shrank a little on her seat.

  An enormous person brooded in the shadows up there, watching their passing. She could only make out its hunched shoulders as they blocked the light, though as her eyes adjusted she thought she could see huge, round eyes observing her in return. A true Threheng giant, larger by far than any Jalan she’d ever seen before, come out of the legends of the East. The giant passed from view, the sky glimmering between the ropes and the heads of carved mammalian figures. As they sailed towards some massive steps that rose into the side of the hull, Eranthis caught sight of something closer to the stern, strung from ropes across the bulwark. She patted Jatropha lightly on the arm.

  It was a green serpent at least forty feet from nose to tail, drying and wrinkled from the day’s sun. The finned tail, misshapen where the ropes cut into it, hung down close enough for the stench to reach her as they arrived at the steps.

  “Do you like my leviathan?”

  The vast shadow she’d witnessed on the deck resolved itself as it strode down the steps, turning to gaze up at the sea creature hanging over the bulwark of his ship. When the giant reached the water’s edge, he stooped low to observe them and extended his arm.

  “If it isn’t my old friend the Amaranth!”

  Jatropha reached out and patted the enormous hand, his fingers sliding over an arthritic-looking ivory claw that could have chopped his head in two. “Commodore Palustris.”

  The giant Jalan turned his blue eyes on Eranthis. She could see, even seated on the far side of the boat, the flecked scarlet corona that surrounded each pupil, like blood circling a drain. “And who is this? Have you had a daughter?”

  “This is my ward, Eranthis.”

  She nodded, speechless. The commodore wore a dark felt coat in the Eastern Shamefashion that she’d grown to recognise, though it remained unbuttoned on so warm a day. He was at least twenty feet at the shoulder and looked the same in width, with a magnificent red nose crowning his great droopy face. A blond coil of beard sprouted from his chin and wagged in the sea wind. His teeth, when he smiled, looked like thick, tapered chunks of stained marble.

  “Eranthis. Welcome,” he said in Tenth. His rumbling voice registered in the marrow of her bones.

  They climbed aboard, following in Palustris’s massive, rolling footsteps.

  “Caught yesterday at the Greater Point,” he said, glancing back at them and gesturing up to the serpent. “Should fetch a pretty price in Izmirean.”

  “A whole Scarlet, I’d say, sold to the right collector,” Jatropha said.

  “Oh yes?” He turned to regard the Amaranthine with delighted interest. “Not boiled down for tallow?”

  “Nelumbo’s tallow works wouldn’t give you a third of that,” Jatropha said with crisp certainty. “If it were mine, I’d sell it wholesale to the beast auctions at Ulamis, twenty miles west.”

  “Beast auctions,” Palustris repeated thoughtfully. “Ulamis.” He quickened his step, visibly pleased. “You know best, as always, Amaranth.”

  They came to the first of the vessel’s large balconies, flanked by yet more sculpted figures. The breeze had picked up and Eranthis realised as she looked over the rail how high they suddenly were above the sea. The serpent’s head hung below them, trussed in layers of cloth and netting.

  Palustris’s hunched form nodded in her direction as he walked. “A Seventh name.”

  “Yes,” she said as she followed him through a high-ceilinged passage and into an enormous wood-panelled antechamber. “I grew up in Shatoyz Town. Part of your territories now, I expect.” Jatropha had taught her to speak her mind in every situation: since becoming his acolyte she could not be threatened, he said, and there might be instances when she spotted something even the Amaranthine did not.

  Palustris shrugged off his coat, dumping it over a vast hound-footed chair at the entrance to his chambers. “Shatoyz? I’ve no idea. You’d have to ask my general, Oxalis. He granted the Seventh freedom under the Oyal on the condition they open their ports.”

  He pushed through a set of doors, Jatropha and Eranthis gazing up as they opened to reveal a room with a spectacularly high ceiling.

  “Sit, please,” Palustris said, clearing his throat with a rumble and padding over to one of four identical chairs arranged together in the centre of the chamber. The commodore had switched to Seventh, Eran-this noticed.

  She approached one of the high-backed, animal-footed chairs and climbed the ladder at its side. Palustris settled himself and watched Jatropha do the same. They sat and regarded each other, high off the floor. Eranthis took a moment to examine the enormous varnished chamber, noting the bell ropes that collected and rose up to the darkness of the ceiling, and the hints of illustrations all over the walls. She could hear and smell a lunch of some kind being prepared somewhere in the adjacent rooms and hoped her stomach wouldn’t growl. Immunity to danger, though certainly a happy circumstance, appeared only to magnify other, lesser concerns.

  The fourth chair remained unoccupied except for a stack of metal tablets and folds of stamped paper. Out of the corner of her eye, Eran-this sa
w upon them the Threheng lettering—pressed, inkless indenta-tions—densely packed into backward-running sentences.

  “So you are thinking of travelling north, Amaranth,” Palustris said to Jatropha, signalling to his lurking Thirdlings for the window shutters to be opened. The sound of the sea and the port drifted in, warming the dim place. Eranthis saw that the patterns she’d taken for wallpaper were in fact huge painted maps. “We are escorting you to Izmirean, yes?”

  “If you’d be so kind,” Jatropha said. “I shall take you to the auctions.”

  Palustris beamed, accepting trays as they were brought in. Out of apparent deference to the Amaranthine they contained only drinks. Eranthis looked at the bowls and cups with disappointment.

  “I must tell you before I forget, Amaranth,” Palustris said as he took up a bowl—tiny in his massive hands—and passed it to Eranthis. “I made sure Oxalis knew that your houses in Bandirma and Korfez weren’t to be touched during the advance on the Sixth.”

  Jatropha smiled, his gaze travelling over the maps on the walls. “Thoughtful of you, Commodore.”

  Palustris hesitated, his lips pursing. “Though it pains me to report that the capital town of Istano-Dalmerre offered resistance. The Second’s legions judged—as we did—that the strait would be of strategic importance.” He paused. “Consequently the town was heavily shelled, from both land and sea. It would surprise me if any of your residences there survived.”

  Eranthis peered at her fingernails, careful to avoid eye contact with the Amaranthine. Jatropha had been known for decades as a hermit, and yet that now appeared to be the furthest thing from the truth.

  “And my properties further west?” Jatropha continued with an air of relaxed resignation. “Seized by the Second, I expect?”

  Palustris looked taken aback. “What properties would these be, Amaranth?”

  “Oh,” Jatropha opened his hand and began ticking off the fingers, “a mill in Orestias, three houses in Sapes, a fortress in Ihtiman—”

  Eranthis couldn’t help but stare. As the Immortal continued to list the places he owned, it suddenly occurred to her what he might be doing. Her geography was better than most: every location Jatropha had mentioned was further north-west from the last. She looked off to the windows, hiding her smile behind her hand.