From the mouth of the mermaid a bouquet emerged, its flowers every colour of the rainbow, plus black and white, and an eighth, almost luminous colour that she knew must represent ultra-violet. These flowers expanded into lines and spots of colour, then somehow dissolved into the fluid around Manserphine, like ink into sand. With them went the white structure. Manserphine felt loneliness, and regret for the passing of colour and good. She understood that there really was going to be a flower crash: the flowers represented the networks, and hence goodness.
All around her the leached colour coalesced like oil into small globes that seemed to beseech her. They wanted to be saved, or so it seemed to her. She was beset by thousands of tiny pleas, the innocent wishes of children, and it was all she could do to stop herself reaching out and gathering them to her breast, where she knew they would be safe. She sensed that she was somehow important to Zaïdmouth. Then foresight took her. With the mermaid watching she looked up into sun soaked heights, took a deep breath, and rose, to emerge like a geyser and explode into pigmented rain, which fertilised all about, turning grey ground into stained grass.
There’s going to be a flower crash!
Manserphine returned to the reality of her room. The choking scents of honeysuckle and lemon filled the air, and she began coughing. Hundreds of insects filled the room, whirring around her head, smacking into her, their saw-tooth buzzing filling her sensorium. She was frightened. They crawled up her legs. They struggled in her hair. Panicking, she ran to the window and opened it, whereupon the insects threw themselves as one into the air and sped south over the roof of the inn. Manserphine was left gasping on the floor, her nose streaming and her eyes itching, the memories of the vision fresh in her mind, symbolising all the knowledge she had acquired.
She was exhausted. The power of the vision had drained her. She flopped onto her bed, too tired to dress, and lay slowly freezing as the winter air outside sank into the room. Her bare skin first goosebumped then turned pale. After some time the sense that she was trapped in a paralysed body overcame her, and she forced her icy limbs into motion, closing the window then pulling on her gown. Unsteadily she walked downstairs, to sit before the fire.
Vishilkaïr entered the common room. “Hello. You look ill.”
“I’m just cold.”
He walked over and put a hand on her arm. “You’re frozen. Honestly, you have Kirifaïfra to look after you and you still manage to hurt yourself.”
“Stop fussing.”
Vishilkaïr ignored her. “I must make you a hot toddy. Let me see… plenty of nutmeg, plenty of stingwort, and a touch of the firewater.” He took a glass, a bottle, and poured a three-finger tot. “Add some whiskey… there we are. Drink that.”
Manserphine gratefully took a sip of the liquor. She walked to the bay window and looked out. In the distance lay the sea, grey and blue, criss-crossed with streaks of morning light. Tears formed in her eyes as she watched its rippling motion. She sobbed, and the tears ran down her cheeks, until she was weeping from the longing in her heart. She wanted to skip across dunes of sand, walk along the shore into an evening sun, through the night, then return to greet the morning sun, barefoot, with the breeze in her hair. She wanted to find strangely coiled shells, pieces of rounded wood, odd stones and lumps of metal. She wanted to pick up a lump of amber and reflect on the insect inside.
Kirifaïfra’s strong arms turned her, and she buried her head in the pinny he wore. Her tears soaked his undershirt.
“What is it?” he murmured.
“I want to go there.”
“Where?”
She looked up at him. Vishilkaïr stood at his side, concern in his face. “To ocean,” she said. “I’m in the wrong place. I should be by the sea. I should have gone down to the Shrine of the Sea when I was a girl.”
“Surely not.”
Manserphine entertained a thought. “I will go. Now.” She struggled to be free of Kirifaïfra, but he would not let her go. “I must go.”
“You’ve not mentioned all this before,” Kirifaïfra said sternly. “Why should you suddenly want to go down there? Aequalaïs isn’t safe.”
“Don’t be so suspicious. You’ve only heard silly rumours. They are noble and strong and their speech flows like the tide.”
Kirifaïfra tutted. “That’s just an old story you’ve picked up off the networks.”
True. Manserphine could feel the longing ebb, but she struggled once more. “Let me go.”
Kirifaïfra hesitated, then freed her. Manserphine straightened her dress. “Another whiskey,” she said to Vishilkaïr.
It was over. The echo of her surf yearning remained in her mind, but her emotions were quiet, like a deep well at night. She dried her face. This had happened before. After intense visions she would be desperate to see and hear the sea, to smell salty air and wonder at the perfectly flat horizon.
She sighed.
Her drink arrived. “I’m free of it,” she muttered. “Bring me a menu, I’m starving.”
Later that afternoon Pollonzyn arrived at the Determinate Inn asking after Manserphine. The pair sat on the bay window seat, Pollonzyn with ale, Manserphine with a seaweed vodka.
Pollonzyn said, “Cirishnyan has knowledged me regarding a favour we require from you.”
“Flowered up.”
“There was a theft from our floral home bed, a few hours after floweropen. A whole calyxful of abstract petals were stolen from our memories. Cirishnyan suspects the crones. Given that suspicion, she wondered if you could investigate.”
“Scented. Shall we walk after this watering?”
They drank up, then departed for Novais. At the Shrine of Flower Sculpture, Manserphine was shown into a chamber to the rear, where she found irregular beds full of winter flowering blooms, their inner screens twinkling in the soft light of a dozen wall tulips. The chamber was empty except for Cirishnyan, who sat alone, a mournful expression on her face.
Manserphine approached. “Good pollen to you,” she greeted the cleric.
“There has been a terrible theft,” Cirishnyan replied in a doleful voice.
Manserphine sat at the nearest flowers and examined their screens. These being winter blooms, the screens were granular, as if she was looking through frosted glass, and the data windows below were somewhat difficult to follow. From an inner pocket she withdrew her insect pen, a device made to mimic the pollen gathering attributes of a species of insect, which allowed for network manipulation without the presence of actual insects. Like most pens, the end was shaped as a generic bee, which lacked the precision of a pen made to mimic a particular insect but which made for ease of use amongst more than one species of flower.
“What exactly was removed?” she asked.
“Abstract petals. They all related to gardening with softpetal.”
“What fragrance of gardening?”
Cirishnyan sighed. “Large scale—fortresses, walls, all unusual petals, nothing subtle.”
Manserphine pulled the nearest screen towards her, holding it so that it was a foot from her face. She touched the bee end of her pen onto the black stamens, until, after a few experiments, she had the sense of how the data windows moved with the movement of her pen. The flowing intuition of one familiar with flower technology then came upon her. She followed the abstract trail of the raiders until she had dumped all the data into a memory root. She frowned. So far she had not needed to use any knowledge of her own Shrine; anyone here at the Shrine of Flower Sculpture could have done this. By now she would have expected to have noticed a clue, some hint of her fellow clerics.
“I’ve sent the data to a root,” she told Cirishnyan. “Let’s see what fragrance it is.”
They watched data flow across the nine inch screen of a giant snow-magnolia, orange and yellow against a frosty green background, but Manserphine was again struck by the quality of the trail. Clerics of Our Sister Crone used carefully tested methods that manifested a certain depth, frequently following the pattern of
the act of arousal as enjoyed by some incarnations Our Sister Crone; preparation of the goal, expansion, then a series of data-catches from all across the relevant network, ending in a series of four or five sudden transactions. Nothing like this was evident. Nor did it follow the pattern of numerous shallow events, which characterised the work of clerics from the Shrine of Flower Sculpture.
What, then? “I think I shall play this data as a series of sounds,” Manserphine said.
Cirishnyan hissed her displeasure. “That is leaf knowledge!”
“Scentless,” Manserphine replied, shaking her head. “They garden with sound to the exclusion of almost everything else. We garden enjoying all our senses, as was meant to be.”
Cirishnyan remained unhappy, but she let Manserphine continue. Eventually Manserphine had a recording that approximated speech. She played it. Familiar… she played it once more.
“I have it!” she cried.
“What?”
“By converting the fragrance of the abstract petal theft into a kind of speech I’ve interpreted the thoughts behind it. I hear who the thieves are.”
“Who?” demanded Cirishnyan and Pollonzyn together.
“Clerics from the Shrine of the Sea.”
They gasped.
“There is no doubt. I recognise the heaving, ebb-and-flow fragrance of this data.”
Cirishnyan sighed, then cursed in some secret flower-tongue, and while Manserphine did not understand it she recognised the anger on the cleric’s face.
“This is an unfortunate reservation,” Cirishnyan told Manserphine. “I had wished that your intimate understanding of the crone meadow would aid us here, but if we are pestered by the saltysands we have no chance of discovering what gardening they have.”
Manserphine considered this. “Perhaps, or perhaps not.” In silence she considered what had happened to her during recent weeks. She felt as if the direction of her life had shifted slowly toward the south. It was as if her inner face regarded the sea. She did not know why this should be, but she knew it to be true. One option stood out. A visit to Aequalaïs.
“Scentless!” cried a shocked Cirishnyan when Manserphine voiced her thoughts.
“It is not so perilous,” Manserphine insisted. “The sand meadow itself is little known, that is all. It is saltysands home bed that offers peril.”
“I cannot sanction such a visit.”
Manserphine shrugged. “I am not grafted to you. I am Interpreter at crone meadow. If I want to visit, then I shall.”
“But why can you not explore their meadow from our bed here?”
“Of all the meadows, the sandy one is the most isolated. I can only explore fully from the inside, so gardening from here would gather me little. Their flower networks comprise a shoreline ecology.”
“But I shall feel guilty,” said Cirishnyan.
“You need not. I agreed to garden for you, remember. The deed did not involve force.”
Cirishnyan nodded. “Then I shall aid you. Should you go.”
“I think I shall go.”
“I shall request Dustspirit for aid.”
Manserphine thought back to her encounter with the spirit in the motes. “Scentless. I fear Dustspirit. That is, I fear her fragrance.”
Cirishnyan frowned and seemed close to an outburst. Pollonzyn moved to steady her, but Cirishnyan waved her away, saying, “I need no trellis! Manserphine, you must understand that Dustspirit is a purity of good colour. Fearing her is insulting her.”
Manserphine looked away. The tension eased as silent seconds passed.
At length Cirishnyan said, “There is one other petal of aid I can offer. A gynoid.”
Manserphine nodded, eager to please the scowling cleric. “Scented. A strong gynoid, full of pollen.”
“Flowered up. Knowledge me via Pollonzyn tomorrow regarding when you depart.”
Manserphine departed the Shrine and returned to Veneris. Early evening enshadowed Zaïdmouth, and from low clouds snow fell, a light scattering that froze to the hard earth but melted on her face. As she walked, she wondered if she was doing the right thing. Yes, of course: it was the right option and it was the right time. Her banishment allowed her a certain freedom, which she must exploit. If the networks she wanted to explore were in Aequalaïs then there she must go, and if her own life was somehow linked to that urb, then all the more reason.
After a tot of whiskey with Vishilkaïr she retired to bed. A few minutes later there came a loud crash from the adjacent corridor. Nobody stirred downstairs. Wondering if at last there was another guest, Manserphine walked along her corridor to its end, where she looked right and left. She was surprised to see Kirifaïfra walking away towards his door, naked, water running down his back and legs, steaming slightly in the cold air. She stared. His physique was as striking as his face, marred only by a scar traced down his back like a yard of string. She caught her breath in case he heard her. Guilty at this voyeurism, yet unable to resist, she watched him pause at his door, push it open with his toe, then stroll in.
She returned to bed, where she tried to settle. The incident played on her mind. Kirifaïfra’s natural ease intrigued her, and she wondered why neither Vishilkaïr nor Omdaton had come to investigate.
~
Next day Pollonzyn arrived to consider the details of the expedition, but through overhearing their conversation Vishilkaïr came to know what they were planning. He tried to dissuade Manserphine, but she was resolute.
“It is my task,” she insisted. “Let me do what I must do.”
“It’s too dangerous.”
“Have you been there? No. Listen to fewer scare stories and pay more attention to the facts.”
“Well, I won’t let you go alone,” he declared. “Kirifaïfra will go with you.”
“I wasn’t going alone,” Manserphine replied, annoyed at his presumption. “I am going with the gynoid.”
“Aitlantazyn,” supplied Pollonzyn.
“So there.” Though, thinking about it, a trio including Kirifaïfra would be better. “I’ll consider your offer,” she told Vishilkaïr. “You haven’t even asked him yet.”
“Oh, he’ll go.”
Manserphine frowned, rattled by this certainty. Recently she had been thinking far too much about Kirifaïfra. “You will have to free him from work tomorrow.”
“As you wish.”
So it was settled. Next morning dawned clear and icy, and as the sun rose out of sea mist Aitlantazyn presented herself at the inn door. She was tall and bulky, but carried herself with the grace of a gymnast. A scimitar and a club hung at her belt. The pigment in her plastic skin had coalesced in the cold, making her look like the victim of dermatitis. Her huge eyes were orange with glittering golden sparks. She spoke Veneris dialect, beginning with, “Good morning, Interpreter.”
“Manserphine,” came the automatic correction.
“Are we ready to go?” Aitlantazyn asked.
Manserphine glanced inside the inn. “I think Kirifaïfra is still winding his pigtail. Vain man.”
“A man is coming with us?”
“Do you object?”
“I am yours to command. But it is unusual.”
Manserphine uttered a single humourless laugh. “He and his uncle are both unusual men. Quiet, now, here he comes.”
Kirifaïfra was dressed in a woollen greatcoat, black knee boots and a red scarf that he coiled around his neck. On his broad back hung a rucksack. He grinned.
“I’ll take that as the signal to move off,” Manserphine said.
For some time they did not speak, as they trod the streets of the urb trying to avoid flowers deactivated by frost that flopped from the central aisle to outer paths. The extreme narrowness of the streets made walking difficult. Overhanging buildings reduced light to gleams and beams. But once they were away from Veneris they struck a path that led west around the autohives, and Kirifaïfra began to chat about the weather, the likelihood of snow, and the possible date for spring and the reacti
vation of the flower networks. He estimated that day as a month ahead. Manserphine thought six weeks.
After an hour they saw the Water Meadows ahead, snail-infested flats stretching as far as the eye could see. Beyond, just out of sight, lay Aequalaïs.
“Here we come to our first decision,” Manserphine said. “Do we go across or under?”
“Let us check the nearest tunnel,” Aitlantazyn suggested. “I can see the dark hemisphere of an entrance not a quarter of a mile away.”
This they did. A foul breeze rose up from the entrance, but still Aitlantazyn led them down the crumbling stone steps to the tunnel mouth, gesturing with her free hand for them to stay back. She took a torch from her pocket and spoke to it, whereupon it produced a cone of light. The tunnel looked clear, though a few inches of water sloshed inside it, and algae of all species hung in strings from the walls and roof. Aitlantazyn gestured them on, shining the torch on anything ahead that might offer danger.
The tunnel was long. After fifteen minutes they still could not see the end, and Manserphine began to feel uncomfortable, but then she saw a light ahead, and she splashed past Aitlantazyn. The gynoid stopped her, grabbing her shoulder with a single, immense hand. “Not yet,” she whispered. She walked on ahead and when certain it was clear waved them on. They ascended the steps and looked out over Aequalaïs.
Covering the shallow slope down to the sea Manserphine saw scores of buildings, all glassy and bright and perfectly cuboid, reflecting the rays of the sun so that it was like confronting a garden of mirrors. The broad streets between these tower blocks ran with water. All were devoid of people. They saw nothing of flowers, just verges of green dotted with white salt marks. Above them, gulls flew, keening as they wheeled about, while at their feet, in innumerable brackish pools, they saw crayfish, aluminium crabs, and the shifting rainbows of anemone tentacles.
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