The Floating Islands

by Rachel Neumeier

  Father was at the ministry, in the First City, at the edge of the Island; he would be gone until long past dusk. As was the custom on Moon’s Day, Mother had gone to pay calls on other Second City matrons. By now she would be comfortably ensconced in the home of one of her friends, where she and other visitors would sip cooling ices and exchange all the Second City gossip. Trei, of course, was at the library. Even the servants were out: Araenè had given both of them permission to visit the market and take the afternoon off.

  So Araenè was alone. That made it a perfect day. Wholly perfect.

  Araenè stepped back into her room and turned to gaze at herself in her mirror. Dark green trousers and a dark red shirt, both from that carefully hidden stash in the back of her own wardrobe. A dusky purple sash, pinned on the right side. Her hair bound up and tucked under a hat with a broad, floppy brim—the hat was ridiculous, but conveniently popular among the sillier young men right now. Slender pins to hold the hat firmly in place. She had sewn pads into her shirt to broaden her shoulders and wore thick bracelets, foppish but very masculine, to disguise the fineness of her wrists.

  Araenè glanced at herself in the mirror one last time. There was nothing she could do about her slender girl’s throat, but no one had ever seemed to notice this flaw. Little more than the change of clothing was required: in a year or two she might have more difficulty, but Araenè did not yet take after her generously figured mother. If she was lucky, she’d take after her father’s side of the family instead. She nodded, satisfied: it was not a girl who looked back at her from that mirror, but a boy. A vain boy, a boy who apparently thought too much of himself, yes. But a boy.

  She made one more cautious inspection of the alley, then swung neatly out the window, hung by her fingertips for an instant, and dropped. It was several feet to the cobbles; Araenè bent her knees as she hit, put out her hands for balance, and straightened. She touched the brim of her boy’s hat to make sure it was still in place and then walked quickly down the alley, turned the corner, and let her demure girl’s step lengthen to a boy’s free stride.

  The avenues of the Second City radiated away from the white towers of the First City. These avenues were arranged in even, precise concentric arcs, cut through by long, straight streets that gave swift access to the First City. Araenè knew where to find the nearest open market, where the shops were that carried the most interesting Yngulin silks or the newest imports from Cen Periven, where the finest restaurants were, the high-class ones that well-bred women, if escorted, could patronize. Every Second City woman knew these things.

  But Araenè also knew the three fastest ways to get from her house to the University. She knew her way around the University, too, and she doubted any other well-bred Second City woman knew that.

  If one stayed on proper streets, then the University lay nearly a bell from Araenè’s home. But she could cut more than half that time by crossing through two private gardens and climbing up and over the roof of a shop that sold secondhand clothing. Though it was important not to be spotted in the gardens, no one looked askance at boys taking the rooftop shortcut. Students, perennially late for one or another lecture or demonstration, used this shortcut as though it were one of the official student pathways, and paid for the privilege by donating clothing to the shop (if they were wealthy) or buying clothing there (if they were poor). Long ago someone had fixed hand- and footholds to make the climb even faster, and now Araenè went up and over the shop almost as quickly as she might have walked down a street.

  The southeastern half of the University was First City, all white marble and wrought iron. But gradually the University had pressed out into the Second City, and—in keeping with the decree of the ministry of stoneworks—as it passed that traditional boundary, its architecture shifted to the low style and red stone of the Second City. But the University ran right up to and past the outer border of the Second City, and so along its northwestern edge it dissolved into the congested, narrow, odd-angled Third City streets.

  This, of course, was where the used-clothing shop lay, and this was also Araenè’s favorite part of the University. She loved the narrow crowded streets, the freedom, the noise, and the unpredictable excitement of Third City. But she did not have time to venture out into the maze of Third City, not if she was to catch Master Petrei’s long-awaited lecture—she’d been sure, after her cousin’s unexpected arrival, that she would miss it, an outrageous disappointment.

  But this perfect day had rescued her after all. Araenè did a dance step or three in sheer delight at regaining the freedom of the streets, and a passing older student shook his head at her in mock disapproval and called, “Not so happy, youngster: don’t you know a show of joy makes the masters think we can handle extra work?”

  Araenè laughed. “I can handle extra work,” she called back, boy-bold. “So I’ve no need of a sober face, though I thank you for your concern!”

  The other student grinned and gave her the gesture that meant And good luck to you, with its implication that really you were riding too high and could expect a fall.

  “Time enough to flinch when I’m falling,” Araenè called over her shoulder, and ran on.

  Once across the rooftop shortcut, she hurried past the main Classics hall on her left and one of the Rhetoric theaters on her right. After that, there was only a small courtyard before the Ephemeral Arts building where Master Petrei would be lecturing. A flight of stairs led down into the relative dimness of the thankfully cool lecture hall.

  She made her way quietly along the back of the hall and found a place to stand, since there were few seats left.

  “Hsst! Arei!” a voice whispered, and a discreet hand lifted in the very back row, beckoning Araenè to one of these few.

  Gratefully, Araenè crept forward and slipped into the offered seat.

  “You’re always late! Even for Master Petrei!” murmured her benefactor, Hanaiki Cenfenisai, a boy a year or so older than Araenè. She had met Hanaiki two years ago. She remembered everything about that day vividly: Master Toranvei Hosidai had been visiting from Bodonè. Furious that she could not attend his lecture, agonized at the rules that constricted her life, amazed to find herself by chance with the entire day to herself, Araenè had hidden her hair under a hat for the very first time and made her way across Canpra to the University. She had timidly asked impatient passersby and older students, all of whom gave her confusing, complicated directions; she had been amazed at the size and complexity of the city and the University. Twice she had almost crept back home, but then she had found the hall at last and paid the fee for the right to slip inside.

  Hanaiki—tall, sarcastic, and self-possessed—had borrowed a quill from her, broken it, and insisted on buying her supper after the lecture to make up for it. She’d barely dared speak to him, but he’d spent the meal dissecting Master Toranvei’s fascinating lecture, until Araenè forgot her agonized shyness and started to enjoy herself. He’d been the first boy to ever treat Araenè—Arei—with the casual, uncomplicated acceptance one male offered another. His was a friendship Araenè cherished.

  Now Araenè shrugged and whispered back, “I know!” She didn’t apologize—a boy wouldn’t apologize. She whispered instead, “Can I see—”

  Hanaiki shifted his notes so that Araenè could see them.

  The lecture was a good one, all about special Yngulin techniques that you could use to capture the essence of spices in hot oil for the last-minute finishing of a dish. Master Petrei was talking about finishing savory dishes, but Araenè instantly started thinking about using the same technique for finishing sweets. Grain-based sweets were the obvious extension: saffron and cardamom with rice, for example. But could the technique be used to flavor pastries? Or the creams one filled them with? What about using butter instead of oil? Well, but butter would burn at the high temperatures Master Petrei seemed to consider necessary for the technique.… Oil couldn’t be substituted for butter in pastry, not if you wanted the pastry delicate and flaky, but, hmm
… one might use clarified butter.…

  “A good lecture,” Hanaiki said afterward, walking with Araenè through the warren of Third City alleys. The afternoon sun pounded down upon the streets; the cobbles cast the heat back into the air and gave the thick afternoon air an almost physical body and weight. Hanaiki took off his own floppy hat and fanned himself with it. “Hot!” he complained. “And that lecture made me hungry. Want to run over to Cesera’s? Everyone’s going.”

  Araenè gave Hanaiki a playful—masculine—shove. “Everything makes you hungry. Yes, I would, but no, I can’t.”

  “Your father’s unreasonable,” Hanaiki began.

  “I grant you’ve the right of it, and indeed there’s no possibility of denying it. But for all that, and for good and all, he’s—”

  “Still my dear, my honored, my own progenitor—and besides, he controls the family purse,” they said together, finishing a quote from a play ragingly popular among the students.

  “I’ll need to run as it is,” Araenè added.

  “It’s far too hot to run! Much better come to Cesera’s,” Hanaiki coaxed.

  Araenè laughed and shook her head. “I truly can’t! But you go, and start a contest of pastry-making—maybe you’ll even win.” She made the gesture that meant And good luck to you.

  Hanaiki pulled a mock-sorrowful face and said, “Ah, that’s why I want you to come! You never do fall!”

  Araenè laughed again and heartlessly left her friend on his own. Yes, a good lecture. A wonderful day altogether. But a glance at the sun made her blink: she hadn’t exaggerated as much as she’d thought when she’d said she needed to run. Thinking about the lecture, Araenè followed a couple of other students over the rooftop of the clothing shop without paying much attention to where she put her hands and feet, scrambled down the other side, turned automatically to the left, and strode into the Third City alleyways, heading for a familiar shortcut.

  Some of Third City was red stone or red brick, but the rest was built of cheaper yellow brick or dingy plaster. Most of the buildings housed small shops below, selling handcrafts, cheap copper jewelry, dried herbs, old books—whatever could help support the families that lived above the shops. The buildings were crowded tightly together, sometimes leaning out over the narrow alleys so far that they roofed tunnels through which the alleys threaded. Children ran in noisy packs, weaving in and out among their elders, intent on business Araenè could not even imagine. She had never been able to decide whether she should envy them their freedom or pity them their poverty—both, maybe.

  Monkeys ran along the rooftops: mostly the gold-flame marmosets and some of the larger brown ones with long white mustaches. Children fed them, even when their parents warned that no one was going to hand them a dinner free out of the air and did they think bread grew from the cobblestones? Sapphire-winged birds perched on clotheslines and hopped along the cobbles, independent and quick, finding their own crumbs in the streets. Araenè liked the birds best. She bought cumin bread from a cart to crumble for them, though she did eat a few bites of the fragrant, chewy bread herself. She could buy pastries on her way home, she decided: spicy lamb and lentil pastries. She knew a vendor who made good ones. That was the sort of thing she might have made if she’d spent the afternoon at home, and there were figs and pomegranates, so she could make a compote for dessert; that would be easy—she scattered the last of the bread crumbs, lengthened her stride, and looked up.

  And stopped, so suddenly that a man behind her almost bumped into her and sheered aside with a growled comment about empty-minded boys who couldn’t keep out of the way on public streets.

  Araenè stared in confusion at the buildings around her. Where was she? She had turned left from the clothing shop—hadn’t she? Yes, because she had passed Verenkei’s bookshop on the corner. And then hadn’t she turned right and cut through the alley after the cart selling roasted chickens? Or had she? She knew, with a sinking feeling all through her body, that she should have crossed into Second City by now, that she did not recognize the buildings around her, and that she was lost. And that the sun, never minding Araenè’s urgent necessities, was still continuing its inexorable slide toward the west.

  A woman at a pastry cart was happy to provide directions, along with a plum tart. The tart’s crust was tough and its filling too sour. Araenè gave the pastry to a little boy in a ragged shirt and turned distractedly down the alley the vendor had indicated. Nothing looked familiar. All she found was more maze-like alleyways between crowded Third City buildings. She hurried down one and then another, but found nothing familiar. It might lack half a bell till dusk now, if that much. Araenè was filled with a growing conviction that she would not make it home before dark and that her parents would be waiting, appalled and worried, when she finally found her way back. Tears prickling at the backs of her eyes, she stopped in a doorway to catch her breath and try to recover her nerve.

  “Here, now,” a kind voice said near her. “You do look worried, youngster.”

  Araenè looked up, startled.

  The speaker, a large, shapeless man of uncertain age, was sitting on the step in the next doorway over. He was holding a pewter mug, which he waved gently toward Araenè. “You know your own trouble best, no doubt, and I’m sure I’m just an interfering old fool, and a drunken fool at that. But I’m old enough to be forgiven for interfering, and so I’ll just say, if you’re in some little trouble, child, and you clearly are, you might ask over there.” He gestured with his mug toward a doorway set in a red brick wall across the alleyway. Liquid sloshed over the edge of the mug and spilled across the stones of the doorstep with the yeasty smell of ale. There was something else mingled with that smell, though: a wilder, greener sort of herby scent that Araenè almost felt she knew, but to which she could not put a name.

  Araenè sniffed and rubbed her sleeve across her eyes, but she thought she managed to keep her voice steady. “Who’s over there?”

  “Not a ‘who,’ exactly,” the man said, with another vague wave of his mug. “Nor exactly a ‘what.’ You might say, a ‘where.’ But it’s a good place to go if you’ve lost your way—not that I’m saying that’s your trouble, hmm?”

  The man might be drunk, but then the edges of his words were clear, and Araenè hadn’t seen him drink out of that mug yet. “Who are you?” she asked.

  “Not a very interesting question,” the shapeless man chided. “You might do better, hmm?” He climbed unsteadily to his feet, gripping the wall for support, and shambled through the door and out of sight.

  For a moment, Araenè only stared at the swaying curtain that hung over the doorway through which the man had vanished. Then she got up, took a step toward that doorway, hesitated, turned, and ran across the street toward the door in the red brick wall. From up close, this door proved to be of heavy oak, each quarter of it carved with a different spiraling symbol, none of which Araenè recognized: a surprising door for any Third City shop or dwelling. The door had no clapper.

  In fact, the building itself didn’t really seem like a Third City building. The brick in which the door was set was a rich red, except that every now and then a straw-yellow brick was set among the red ones. Araenè got the impression that if she backed up again and really looked, she might find a pattern in the placement of the yellow bricks. But she didn’t back up. She put her hand on the heavy door. It opened under her hand, swinging with well-oiled ease. Within was a dim hallway paneled in rich woods, where shadows fled reluctantly from the late sunlight Araenè had admitted. Down the hall, she just made out a curtained doorway, and she was almost certain she heard voices.

  Araenè stepped through the heavy door, leaving it open behind her. But the moment she stepped through the door, it seemed somehow far behind her—not to the eye: when she looked nervously over her shoulder, it was still there, standing ajar to let through a bright beam of sunlight. But somehow, though only a step away, the door gave the impression of being remote. Unreachable. And the light that fell
through the doorway seemed attenuated, as though in this hallway it lost all its hot power.

  Afterward, Araenè couldn’t understand why she didn’t run back through the door into the ordinary Third City afternoon. But she did not run. She walked down the hallway, pulled the thick velvet curtain aside, and went into the room that had been hidden behind the curtain.

  The room was large—more than large: looming. Araenè had a sense that the walls were farther away than they seemed to be, even a sense that maybe the room was changing size as she watched. Despite the numerous lamps, it did not seem well lit: the walls, or maybe just the air within the room, seemed to drink up the light. A single massive table took up almost all the available space. The table was cluttered with books and loose papers, spheres of polished stone and glass and metal that ranged from fist-sized to the size of a large melon, tall brass scales and thin copper plates.

  Around the table stood five boys, the youngest perhaps Araenè’s age and the oldest several years older. They looked around as she came in, but the man at the head of the table rapped his knuckles on the table and the boys all jumped guiltily and turned back to him.

  The man was so dark-skinned that Araenè had at first completely missed him in the shadowed room. His eyes were all she could see clearly, and the shine of his white teeth, especially because he wasn’t wearing the jewel-toned fabrics of the Floating Islands, but a plain dark robe that fell without ornament from shoulder to ankle. Then, as her eyes adjusted to the strange light, she saw him better. Tall, lean rather than broad, with severe hawk features and a stern set to his mouth, this man was like no one Araenè had ever seen before. She had heard all her life of Yngul, but never expected to see a man from that country. Now she found that all her imagination had fallen short, and stood speechless.