by Tom Toner
He resumes his careful walk among the silver-dappled shadows of the trees, feeling them thicken around him. The woodwind speech of something like a bird warbles in the dark leaves above his head, warning, perhaps, or just greeting. Small shapes play in the shade ahead, skipping and dancing a ritual that no man has ever seen.
Sotiris, a grinning, beakish face says from up in the branches.
He starts, backing against a tree.
You’re almost there. The lambent eyes of the thing flick their gaze towards the depths of the trees, in the general direction Sotiris was headed.
He nods at the roosting creature, turning and heading off into the darkness. It’s too late to go back now.
Corphuso watched a fly dip in the movement of air that the Immortal had created and knew then that it had already begun. The man’s soul was growing sharper here; outside, in the world beyond, his life dimmed. Corphuso himself had only been here a dozen days or so, but in those days, hunted and starving, the architect had come to terms with where he was, what he was.
The silver moon, implausible to eyes made in the one hundred and forty-seventh century, sank low over the woods and disappeared. Cor-phuso climbed as high as he could into the nest-dense branches and curled himself into a ball, knowing that Sotiris must sleep, too, for just a little while. Corphuso wore the clothes he had arrived in: a grey travel cape slung over a ripped waistcoat. His boots had developed a hole, and things crawled in to sting and bite him in the night. The colour of the cape looked even more muted than he remembered when he first put it on—colours did that here, appearing to fade and bloom like light passing through cloud—only serving to remind him of the brilliance he’d seen, the radiance of the moment that had brought him here.
At first, Corphuso assumed he was the only one ever to have done it, to have touched such a being. He’d seen no trace of other Prism in the Long-Life’s Banish World, as he’d come to think of it, no trace of anything not from another era, until the day he saw that human shape on the hillside.
He’d recognised it at once to be Amaranthine, knowing that stooped, distracted walk anywhere. But this one, he thought as he followed cautiously behind, this one looked younger, fresher, still untouched by the world, as if he weren’t fully here.
Corphuso could come to only one conclusion. This Amaranthine still lived, on some other plane of existence. His soul, stretched thin between two places, Bilocated in the most real of senses, one might say, was unaffected by the dead here.
For that was what they were: dead. And so, Corphuso knew, was he.
As soon as he’d come here—stumbling through the Long-Life’s robes, a scream still frozen in his throat—he’d sensed the vibrancy of this place, this land of dreams. Those who lived in this realm truly lived, but were also utterly gone from any other. At once, the beasts in the follies had sniffed him out, howling and tearing at their cell bars. Flitting creatures among the flowers had settled upon his ears, biting, lapping, suckling.
Here, too, he needed to eat, to defecate, to sleep.
Death, death was a mirror.
It was the natural progression, he’d reasoned with himself at his lowest; the next step in his lifelong study of the soul. The world he’d left grew faint in his mind, as he’d suspected it might; his seven daughters and single son, his bored, philandering wife. But one thing remained sharply drawn, burned deep after so many years of work: his machine, his Shell, and the knowledge that it had caused all of this.
He watched the Amaranthine, wondering why he alone saw the man as he trudged through the forest. All the while, unbeknown to the Immortal, another figure followed. Corphuso held his breath as it passed below, following the Amaranthine’s trail.
At first, it appeared behind the man as a shaggy grey wolf, matted and balding with mange. It slinked after him, dim-eyed and apparently uninterested, as if doing nothing more than providing an escort. Now, as it closed the distance between them, it had changed its form to that of a stooped, wraith-like figure: a penultimate stage, Corphuso assumed, before it showed itself to the Amaranthine in the finished form of a man.
Corphuso gripped the branches and looked down, surprised at his own faint jealousy, and wondered what the Long-Life would say; why he took such an interest in this lost soul.
ON THE TOWN
Eranthis looked out across Mostar while she bathed in deep, warm, perfumed water the colour of blood, a Butler Bird roosting silently on a silver perch suspended over her head. At the turn of the Quarter she went to Pentas’s rooms, and together they applied paint to their eyes in the Westerly custom, laughing at their reflections, smearing each other.
Tonight, it was agreed, would be some little respite from the journey, Jatropha having taken it upon himself to watch Arabis, and the sisters had decided to make their way into the city to see the sights.
Lanterns were glowing as they picked their way down the hill stairs from the mayoral palace, passing appreciative smiles and gazes, a line of pale blue tracing the distant walls as if reflecting the river beyond.
The two girls walked slowly, nodding and flashing silver to the strolling locals, pleased with their final attempt at the eye-paint. The last of the stalls in the market squares were closing up to be supplanted by evening entertainments, and they passed quickly through them, commenting, touching, still too unused to the blend of various Western dialects to consider talking to anyone for any length of time.
“All right,” Pentas said at last, after a while spent silently looking among some fine stones. “Shall we?”
Eranthis nodded, soothed by the fine evening air and the pleasant manners of the people they passed. Together they wandered to a covered set of tables in the palm-lined square, its benches crowded with clusters of messenger birds come down from the cotes, and took some chairs that offered a view between the white growth-stone walls and down over the lower city.
“I suggested we stay a little longer,” she said to Pentas, having lifted her finger for service. “But of course he said no.”
“Of course,” Pentas echoed, studying her reflection in the empty glass bottles left by the table’s previous diners. Eranthis gazed out over the walls to the distant eastern gate, where a part of the river she hadn’t seen previously streamed darkly under reflected lights on the far shore. Upon a small wooded island in the middle of the river a bonfire burned, perhaps lit by more of the Awgers that populated the land at the river’s edge. They were a font of information, Jatropha said, already having found the time to talk with some of the permanent population while the Corbita underwent repairs. Eranthis wondered what he spoke to them about.
She snapped out of her thoughts as drinks and nibbles—small bottles of greenish wine, red berries and a pot of glazed, sugared things— were set down before them. Eranthis touched a bottle to her lips and took a small sip, raising it to the darkening sky.
“To Master Knowitall, lord of the non sequitur, and all our fine pocket money.”
Pentas took a gulp and raised her bottle. “May he bore senseless many generations to come.”
“Clink,” Eranthis said, tapping the neck of the bottle against her sister’s, as the Amaranthine told her they had done in antiquity. In the square performers were beginning their acts, unimaginative circus tricks lit by the kindling lanterns and the Greenmoon above. Jugglers started their routines, tossing knives and snakes; birds rose into the air to drop flaming balls; and a puppet show was in the process of setting up, strings being untangled. A Secondling boy, limping not from deformity but a recent blow to his leg, came around with a basket for little silks. As the boy was shooed away by the owner of the place, Eranthis noticed how less than welcome the Secondlings were here, and mulled over what might have happened to all the conspicuously missing white-gold occupants once the city was released from the First’s thrall.
Pentas looked on, her eyes lost. “I suppose when she’s queen we can just clap for these entertainments, any time, day or night.”
Eranthis gestured to
her bottle. “Maintained by a never-ending supply of wine.”
They clinked their bottles again, something dulling their smiles. “The two drunken dowager queens.”
“We will embarrass her,” Pentas said.
“Isn’t that the point of mothers?”
Pentas shrugged, her face lit momentarily by the flames of a nearby magic act. “Ah, but she’ll like you. You’ll spoil her. It’ll be me she casts as the mean one.”
Eranthis didn’t protest, realising it was true. “She’ll know how you cared for her, when times were hardest.”
They drank in silence, their eyes drawn to the acts across the square. A juggler dropped his flaming ball and it rolled off into the drains, prompting a soft ooh from the gathering crowd.
“Yes,” said Pentas, turning back and draining her wine. Her eyes were vacant, almost like Jatropha’s. “I think I might be the more capable of us, when things get difficult.”
Eranthis held up a hand for more bottles, unable these days to decide when her sister was joking. “Oh?”
Pentas glanced at her, deadly serious. “I think, if the girl had been born to you, as . . . as he might have planned, you’d have given her away. Or . . .” her eyes dropped “ . . . used something.”
“Used something?”
“You know what I mean. Those wire things the fleshdoctors have but won’t sell.”
“I know what you mean,” Eranthis said, faintly outraged. “And you wouldn’t have done the same? If Jatropha hadn’t been there to make sure you kept her?” Eranthis shook her head. “This is your wine speaking, Pentas.”
Pentas lowered her eyes, and Eranthis had the sudden impression that her sister was on the verge of tears. “I’ve done my duty.”
She reached out and took her hands quickly, always forgetting her sister’s methods of defence were just that: defence. “You have. You have done your duty. The old man is proud of you, I’m sure, and I know I am.”
Later, they walked through the night city, stopping at any place they liked the look of for more wine. Inns did not exist in Mostar, it appeared; every place that served them was a private house, opened up for the Quarter, where they judged you at the doorway for good character before welcoming you in. Along the way, they attracted a small crowd of Mostar men; carefully polite and interested fellows unwilling to let the girls spend their own money. Some of these men were denied entry with the other guests so that slowly the girls formed around them a group of reputable folk, all well known in the city. Eranthis told Pentas to order only sealed bottles, fully expecting her sister to ignore her as the girl grew more animated in company.
Before long, they were at the walls above the city gates, closed now until morning, beneath a blinding sky of stars. Plinking music and the murmurings of loose groups of people rose with the sounds of the night to where they sat.
“And that one,” Eranthis said, swigging from a bottle and pointing for her new friend, “is the richest of the Firmamental stars, Cancri.”
“Why the richest?” Rumex asked, his hand drifting through her hair.
“Because it’s the most beautiful, and all the richest Immortals chose to live there.” That was what Jatropha had told her, at least.
“And that one?” He pointed to what appeared to be the next brightest.
“I don’t know about that one, but . . .” She searched the brilliant stars, recalling her nights in the Corbita‘s tiller cabin with Jatropha. “There. You see, three down? Look along my arm. That’s Gliese, the capital.”
“Gliese.”
“It was once the Amaranthine world of industry, becoming very rich and influential and allowing the fleets use of its great Foundries only for a huge fee.” She took another swig, passing the bottle across to Pentas. Her sister shook her head—she was sharing a bag of wine fruit with her own Westerly fellow, a very young man whose name Eranthis had forgotten. She got the impression Pentas didn’t like him much. He asked her irritating questions, too forward now he’d drunk his fill.
Eranthis shifted, needing to pee, wondering when their personalities had moved so drastically apart. Their sisterhood wasn’t like a friendship, though she wished it could be. Maybe it was her own fault. She could feel herself changing as she aged, becoming more disinclined to humour people, caring less for the way fools perceived her. Of all the casualties of this newfound arrogance, she supposed her sister would be the first, and that their bond would weaken until they found no reason to stay together at all.
Pentas jumped up suddenly, nimble and surprisingly sober. “Bedtime, I think, Eranthis.”
“But we only just got here,” Pentas’s companion said from the darkness.
“Big day tomorrow. You may see us tomorrow evening, if you like.”
Eranthis smiled and handed the bottle to Rumex. They’d be long gone by then, and Pentas knew it. “It was a pleasure,” she said to Rumex, allowing him a lingering kiss at last, as if in payment for the night. “Until tomorrow.”
“The pleasure was all ours,” he said after them. She looked back into the dark, at his tall, wiry shape breaking up the stars, and was sad she wouldn’t be staying, after all.
CURSED
“You know,” Bidens said, measuring out a plank with his feet, “I thought at first that you were his young wife. Maybe that you both were.”
“Is that so?” Eranthis asked, spying a length of wood that might fit—once they’d sawed its edges down—among the jumble of timbers piled in the Corbita’s spare room.
“But men can’t take two wives in Tail.”
She didn’t understand his meaning at first, then remembered Jat-ropha’s guise as a well-to-do Westerly fellow. “No. They can’t.”
“So,” he continued, a little sheepishly. “The child isn’t his daughter, either?”
Eranthis took a breath as she heaved the plank, understanding she wouldn’t be getting much help from him. “No. She’s being taken back to her family.”
She let him absorb her words. “I see,” Bidens said, nodding slowly. “Say no more.”
They’d all felt the spoke crack as the Corbita ran over something hard on the stones, bending the wheel so that the whole house rolled into a large Bulberry field at the Artery’s side. Pentas had got out immediately to stretch her legs, and Eranthis watched her take Arabis, accompanied by the Amaranthine—still in his handsome Melius guise—to see the nests of some chattering Monkmen in the trees.
“Will her family be happy to see her, do you think?” Bidens asked.
Eranthis hefted her side of the plank onto the railings and balanced it, feeling the paintwork scrape away. This was thick, hard oil-oak; woe betide anyone it landed on. “Some,” she said, thoughtful. “Her grandparents, perhaps. As for her aunts and uncles, I think not.” She looked up into the trees while Bidens levered his end, spying the Monk-men’s little twig nests crowded with stolen bits and pieces.
Bidens slid the plank towards her so they could lower it safely into the field. Their narrow shadows, connected by the long, dark bar of the plank, stretched all the way onto the Artery. Eranthis could just make out the trench in the pebbles where they’d run aground. She glanced back at Bidens, noticing how he gritted his teeth, the muscles in his arms trembling to lift it above his head.
“So,” Bidens said through a grimace, “Pentas doesn’t have a sweetheart or anything back at home?”
“Put it down for a moment—”
Bidens’s fingers slipped as he lost his grip. Eranthis dug her nails into her end of the plank, grimacing as a splinter peeled away and drove into her palm. The plank slid over the edge, toppling past the rails and down into the field. It struck the earth by the wheel with a wobbling thump, bouncing and turning over.
“Well, that’s just perfect!” Eranthis cried, sucking her bleeding palm. She wished she’d hired that travelling fleshdoctor she’d met in Mersin. “If you’ve cracked this one—”
“I’m sorry! That’s the heaviest thing I’ve ever lifted!”
&nbs
p; She went to the balcony and looked down.
Bidens pointed to the Artery. “Look.”
Eranthis followed his finger. A member of the Demian Folk, wearing a velvety blue jacket and long brown boots, had stopped to observe them from a distance. He clutched a straw sun hat protectively to his chest.
“Hullo!” Bidens shouted.
The little Cursed Man, this one mammalish, wrinkled his nose and waddled closer, stopping at the edge of the field to take in their predicament. Eranthis felt an urge to go down and try to pet his gingery-gold fur, but suspected he’d just run away.
“Do you know if there’s anywhere we could hire some help?” Bidens asked, leaning out across the railings. “An inn or something?”
The Demian looked off down the Artery and pointed. “Over up and down about twenty-five Crule, there’s a guesthouse.” His accent was butter-thick, old as the Province. “Won’t get there if your thing’s busted.”
“No,” Bidens said, exhaling and leaning on the railings. Eranthis shrugged; she couldn’t have put it better herself—their thing was certainly busted. “Nothing for it, then. We’d better go and see if the plank’s all right.”
Bidens sighed, raising his hand to the Demian.
“Yes, yes, much luck to you,” the Cursed Man said, replacing his hat and strolling off.
Eranthis climbed down into the field and examined the plank. It appeared to have survived the fall and the subsequent impact with the dusty ground, which boded well for its future as one of the sixteen spokes of an extremely large wheel that would have to deal with this sort of beating day in, day out until their journey was done. The cracked spoke itself would still be good for other, smaller repairs once it had been sawn up.
She remembered seeing a white house—perhaps belonging to the landowner—being poured a few miles back. Not too far to walk, should they need any extra materials; the half-finished building had been surrounded by a skeleton of wooden scaffolding, each level stuffed with metal teasing rods to make sure the stone grew in the desired direction and to the proper thickness all the way around. They’d have a lumber pile somewhere nearby, bought in bulk from the travelling pourer.