Beneath Ceaseless Skies #154

by Darbyshire, Peter

  Young men crowded the landing. “Kashi!! Kashi!! Best deal here.” Some kashi were plain carts with two wheels. Others were festooned with low quality silks. Rahami spied a familiar red banner and a driver whose attention was fixed on the inside of his removed shoe. The tight brown curls of his hair were unmistakable.

  She smiled. “You’ll not find a fare in there.”

  “One mo—” Jonji Ingras looked up. “Rahami?”

  “Tell me you were not expecting me.” Rahami had known Jonji since they were toddlers, his hut a stone’s throw from hers.

  “Sorry to delay you, Madam Seer.” Jonji slipped his shoe on and helped Rahami onto the padded seat. “To your mother’s?”

  “No, the Spider House.”

  He lifted the kashi’s handles and started off at a trot. He remained silent as they passed the Green Leaf Tavern and Wayward Inn and turned inland onto an uneven path. Spring rains had left puddles, but Jonji seemed not to notice.

  “How long have you worked the kashi?” Rahami said.

  “Three years.” Despite his exertion, Jonji spoke firmly.

  “Have you married?”

  “Yes.”

  A pang went through Rahami. She recalled a couple holding hands on the boat. Lower castes married for love, whereas it was a process of social mobility for higher castes. Seers never married at all. Who would want a disturbed soul wrapped within a poisoned body?

  A chipped-stone path carried them through groves of leafless trees and dispirited people. These were spinners traveling to the Spider House to begin their day’s work. Being Ashim, they could not walk on the path, only to its side.

  “What is the gossip about my arrival?” Rahami said.

  Jonji slowed. “Some say the Oracle will have you unmade for indiscretions and you will become Ashim-una again.”

  Rahami nodded. It was possible. She wondered who would be more devastated, herself or her mother.

  “What do you believe?” she said.

  “It is not my place to guess an oracle’s motive.”

  “I suppose not,” Rahami said. She remembered sneaking down to the docks with Jonji to watch men unload crates they imagined to be from all over the world. He had been comfortable with conjecture then. Those were the days, before apprenticeships and social expectations.

  Forest gave way to trimmed gardens surrounding a stacked-stone building large enough to contain most of Hatsi. The Spider House’s roof was pounded copper, green with age.

  Jonji walked the kashi to the main entrance, lowered the handles, and extended his palm. “Please, Madam Seer. Two tenths for the ride, an extra tenth if you found my service satisfactory.”

  Rahami withdrew four tenth-standards from her purse. Her fingertips brushed Jonji’s and a vision bloomed into her—an elderly man presenting a platter of charred lamb chunks atop a bed of carrots and greens. The platter transformed into her father’s face, flesh-white with waterlog, eyes like dark wells. Caste is no excuse to hide from life’s challenges, he said through bloodless lips. The head rolled over, submerged, and was gone.

  Rahami clenched. She missed her father more than she could say.

  “Is something the matter?” Jonji said.

  Rahami caught herself and dropped the coins onto his palm.

  “That is most generous, Madam Seer.” He would not meet her eyes.

  Rahami steadied herself. “Jonji, talk to me. Were we not friends? Did we not watch off-loaders and dream of exotic places? Tell me at least that memory is true. So little of my life is solid.”

  Jonji closed his hand. “That was long ago, a different time.”

  “The future is what we reach for,” Rahami said, “but it is the past that forms us.”

  Jonji’s expression softened. “Come with us, Rahami. After all, you will be one of us if the Oracle unmakes you.”

  “What are you talking about?” Rahami said.

  “We’re going over the mountains.”

  A chill blew through Rahami. She had heard rumors that the Ashim were plotting, but to attempt a crossing of the Spine of the World? It was a desperate, dangerous idea.

  “Think this through,” she said. “You have a stable profession, a family to provide for. I know the prospect of war is frightening, but you cannot let fear lead you to a rash decision.”

  “I’m not afraid,” Jonji said. “This is the opportunity we have waited for all our lives. Have you forgotten what it means to be Ashim?”

  “Of course not,” Rahami said. “But even the most experienced climbers fear the mountain passes.”

  Jonji shook his head. “Forget I said anything, Madam Seer. Forget you ever knew me.” He lifted the kashi handles and trotted away.

  Rahami stared after him, wanting to call out. How could she? The gulf dividing them was as real as the stones beneath her feet. She gazed beyond Jonji to snow-capped peaks turned blue by distance. Surely, it was bluster. No one in their right mind would truly attempt to cross the Spine of the World.

  * * *

  Bands of black hexagonal plates girded the Spider House door. For a heartbeat, Rahami saw a man within the design: square shoulders, nose sharp and straight, dimpled chin. It was an unfamiliar face, stern and resolute, and yet she felt as if she knew it intimately.

  Another phantom. She shook dew from her travel cloak, wishing she could clear her head so easily. Weaver, she prayed, if you have a care for my spirit, please do not let the Oracle’s purpose be my unmaking. Unmaking would remove her ability to enter trance but not the spider toxins from her body or the welts from her arms. It would not restore her past life.

  She grasped the iron pull ring. “It is an honor to be called, Mother Oracle,” she practiced. Despite the door’s great size, it swung open easily.

  Steps angled down into a cavernous chamber holding thousands of glass webberies in hexagonally arranged rows, each housing a single spider. Light washed down from windows high on the walls, where women balanced on crossbeams shooed leather-winged fliers and opened or closed vents to manage the day’s heat. Too much heat and the webs become flimsy, her mother had explained when Rahami came here to clean webberies at fourteen years. Too much chill and spiders go dormant. When Rahami had continued to stare, her mother added, The job’s not suited to girls. Leave the rafters to young men.

  Rahami smiled at the memory. It had been the boys that interested her, not the job. Now women minded the rafters with so many men in the militia.

  She started down the wooden steps, treads as familiar to her feet as if it had been only yesterday she walked them. Difficult to believe that three years had passed since she left the Spider House, and ten since she started her labors here. So much had happened in that time, her father’s and sister’s deaths, her brother moving to Asoman, her mother’s ongoing problems.

  Sweet liquid smells mixed with a heavier tang of hickory smoke. Rahami savored the scent.

  She paused at the stairway’s base to remove her travel cloak and tuck a curl beneath her headscarf. Ashim-una women wheeled carts loaded with buzzing fly boxes to keep the spiders fed, while Querca-debo workers in blue caftans made their way methodically from web to web, checking strand tensions, removing those to be soaked and spun.

  Rahami navigated the busy chamber and pushed through a tapestry wall into a smaller section housing blue orb spiders. Unlike black orb spiders, bred to spin and spin, blues rarely rebuilt their webs. And unlike black orbs, they were fed Harrow bugs, striped beetles with a potent toxin. Ingesting that poison rendered the spiders deadly to all but seers.

  A few paces within, the Mother Oracle tended a webbery. She was cloaked in alabaster silk robes, veils, and skirts that hid all but her sky-blue eyes. Even so, she was an imposing woman with a tall, sturdy frame.

  Rahami cleared her throat, and the Mother straightened, becoming even taller. Rahami swallowed. Until now, she had been in the Mother Oracle’s presence only during Solstice Celebrations, and always at a distance.

  “It is an honor to be called,
Mother Oracle,” Rahami said. Her voice trembled despite her rehearsals.

  “The honor is yet to be woven,” the Mother said. She extended one hand, palm down.

  Rahami touched her forehead to a flesh-colored glove and backed two steps, head bowed.

  “I am intrigued by many things I hear from the villages,” the Mother said.

  “What things?” Rahami nearly bit her tongue trying to take back the impudent question. Your arrogance will do you in someday, Sister Mathe cackled from memory. A common laborer is what you are, and shall always be.

  The Mother sniffed. “It has been reported that you reveal more than the thickest strands to your clients. Is this true? Do you tempt them toward less than likely outcomes?”

  Rahami went cold. “In small ways,” she said. What seer did not allow some speculation? “There is little enough hope in the south without dire predictions.”

  “There are reasons for our rules,” the Mother said. “They protect seer as well as client.”

  “Yes, Mother Oracle.” Rahami knew in a foggy way of the balance between Family leaders, merchant castes, and seers. Politics interested her less than people. “I will restrain myself in the future.”

  “I trust that you will,” the Mother said, “but that is not why I summoned you. I am sending you to Matsomsa Manor.”

  Rahami’s heart skipped. “I do not understand, Mother Oracle. Matsomsa Family employs private seers, specially bred, specially trained. I’m not even a Sister.”

  “Morshimon Matsomsa asked for you by name.”

  “Why would he ask for me?”

  Creases framed the Mother’s eyes. “Do not test my tolerant mood, Rahami.”

  “Apologies, Mother Oracle.” Rahami cast her gaze down.

  The Mother lifted her chin. “The Manor Sisters report that Morshimon does not trust their seeing. He wants more of the future than it is willing to grant.” Ice-blue eyes bore into Rahami’s. “An unfortunate power dynamic has taken root. You are to perform the duty you were taught, without conjecture, without twisting the Weaver’s design. When your reading confirms what the Sisters revealed, it will put an end to this nonsense. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Mother Oracle.”

  “Good. I will have a room prepared. You leave in the morning.”

  “I would prefer to stay with my mother in Hatsi,” Rahami said. “If that is acceptable.”

  The Mother hesitated. For a heartbeat her presence was anything but intimidating. As if in the throes of some distorted vision, Rahami saw through veils of silk and skin to the woman’s core, a writhing webwork of certainty and doubt warring for dominant pattern.

  The Mother glanced away, then back. “Very well, Rahami. Tonight, you play the dutiful daughter. Tomorrow, you will perform your duty to our people.” She indicated the webbery. “I have chosen a blue for you. If the Sisters are content with your seeing, you will receive double your normal fee.”

  “That is most generous,” Rahami said. Madam Seer, Jonji’s voice echoed in her mind.

  The Mother Oracle’s eyes narrowed. “Do not disappoint me, Rahami Honra. Much depends upon this thread.”

  Rahami cast her eyes down, and backed two steps. “Yes, Mother Oracle.” What is she not telling me?

  * * *

  Rahami gripped the goat cart’s bench, trying to retain dignity and her seat at the same time. The driver, a boy of fifteen or sixteen years, had not spoken during their bumpy ride through sycamore forest. Just as well. What would they talk about besides the impending war, or the task that lay ahead of her? Her nerves had already worn so raw with worry that she wanted to jump from the cart and run into the forest.

  The lead goat veered. Rahami clung tightly as the cart shuddered into the brush and wedged between saplings. The driver hopped down. “Stubborn animals.” He rocked the cart free.

  Rahami glimpsed movement through the trees. Deeper within the forest, women tended a fire near dun colored tents. She caught a whiff of meat smoke. Her mouth watered. She had eaten very little at morning meal, not wishing to deplete her mother’s limited stores.

  The driver pulled the lead goat back to the road. The others followed grudgingly, and the cart turned. Rahami still smelled meat smoke, but the tangle was too thick to see anything now.

  “Who were those people?” she asked. Another hallucination?

  The driver remounted without acknowledging her question. Perhaps he hadn’t heard.

  The cart gained momentum. Rahami’s thoughts returned to her impending task. She had heard tales of Matsomsa Manor, mortared walls as high as trees, extravagant halls bedecked with silk, that Morshimon Matsomsa was a man of such height he must stoop through even those doorways; his strength so great he might lift an elephant. With a flush, she recalled another story whispered in the privacy of a women’s chamber, never to be mentioned in the presence of children and husbands.

  “Ashim,” the driver muttered.

  “What?”

  “The people in the forest. I bring them supplies sometimes. The goats must have remembered.” A weight lifted from Rahami, a small weight but nonetheless welcome. The people were real. Maybe the delusions had ended.

  “Where are they from?” she said.

  “Runaways from Chindra and Ashoti, a few from the militia camp. They plan to cross the mountains.”

  Rahami thought of Jonji. “Without supplies and proper clothing, they will surely die.”

  The driver shook his head. “The Weaver will watch over them. The Lost City—”

  “That’s a children’s story,” Rahami said.

  “For some people a story is truer than life.”

  Rahami had no reply for that.

  The driver chewed at his lip. “Weren’t you once Ashim, Madam Seer?”

  Rahami nodded.

  “Then you must understand. If you report them—”

  “I will keep your secret,” Rahami said. What would she say in any case, that a handful of Ashim women glimpsed from a road she did not know planned to kill themselves in the mountains? It took no imagination to guess a high-born’s reaction to that. Fewer mouths to feed.

  The driver relaxed. “Thank you, Madam Seer.” The goats settled too, pulling together, their low bleats less plaintive.

  Rahami listened to the cadence of the wheels turning. Spiny berry thickets gave way to a row of whitewashed bee hives. She smelled honey and imagined the Mother Oracle’s lips moving behind her veil. You are to perform the duty you were taught, without conjecture, without twisting the Weaver’s design.

  Why would Morshimon Matsomsa believe me over Sisters bred to the task?

  The road turned along a ridge, and the view opened onto Matsomsa Manor sprawled along a peninsula into a vast lake. Three wings protruded from its central tower. Chimneys rose from blue slate roofs.

  South of the peninsula, a militia camp numbered more gray tents than Rahami could count. Men practiced swords or bows or pikes, the ring of metal upon metal nearly constant.

  As a child, Rahami had believed war would never reach Querc. A rugged coastline with few natural bays protected them from attack by sea. Invasion from the south would mean defeating a tenacious Amaali people and braving the Decid Plain, where ghosts intent upon bodily possession ruled the night. Now she knew better—the Amaali were not the warriors of legend, and it was said that certain magics could mitigate the ghosts of Decid Plain. Still, it was difficult to accept that the local militia, some of them young men she had grown up with, would soon leave for the front.

  The road descended. Dried mud yielded to manicured river stone. The great manor rose before her like a foreign land. Rahami sat forward as the cart traversed a plank bridge. A boy not much older than her driver stepped from a guard shack, pike in hand. Interlinked hexagonal chest plates depicted the Matsomsa spider crest. Bulky shoulder protectors extended from his neck, making his head look too small.

  “Who wishes entrance?” he barked.

  No one, Rahami thought.

 
; “I bring a seer for Morshimon Matsomsa,” the driver said.

  The boy-guard pointed his pike. “She is to enter through the Elephant Gate. Take care to mind your goats. They may eat rotted apples, but nothing recent fallen.”

  Clicking his tongue, the driver started the team along a row of apple trees. They passed statues of robed men holding scrolls and uniformed men with swords or pikes. These must be Morshimon’s ancestors.

  Wheels clattered on cobblestone as they entered a courtyard featuring a water fountain. Girls spilled from a doorway, followed by a pregnant woman in exquisite blue silks, whose uncovered head marked her as Querca caste.

  “I am Reuda Anch, Mistress of Women,” she said. Up close, she looked younger. “You are Rahami Honra?”

  “Yes,” Rahami said. A girl brought a hand-cart, and helped the others load the webbery and Rahami’s satchel while a mustached guard watched. Not so much to protect my goods as to catch every detail of girls’ bodies moving within loose-fitting garments. Rahami remembered fondly when boys had watched her like this. Few seemed to notice her gender now.

  “I am to show you to the seer residences,” Mistress Anch said. She motioned to an older girl, who scampered inside.

  Rahami followed into a busy kitchen bulging with delightful smells: onions, pressed garlic, vinegar, mustard spice. Pots hung amid ropes of dried herbs. Blazing hearths dominated one wall where women worked dough on a lacquered table.

  Hunger twisted Rahami’s stomach. They crossed a dining room with tables enough to seat fifty, ascended a flight of steps, passed a number of closed doors, and arrived at an arch decorated with river stones and shell and hung with layers of heavy silk. Rahami admired the material. Curtains of this quality, with dense weave and shining surface were rare in the countryside. To live amid such splendor must be wonderful.

  Mistress Anch parted three outer layers: gold, yellow, and white. Colors to blind the spirits.

  “I can escort you no farther,” she said. “The Sisters have been informed of your arrival.” She parted the three inner curtain layers: burgundy, blue and black. Colors to trick spirits into believing they return to their own world.