by Jay Lake
"Indeed."
"By singularly stupid dwarfs, I would think." Onesiphorous marveled at the foolhardiness of anyone attempting assault against a senior Tribade sister.
"I would also think." She stopped in front of his desk. "Lord Mayor Imago sent you here to act as his deputy. Neither of you understood what that would mean. Today it meant two dwarfs tried to kill me. Tomorrow they could be after you."
"Slashed or Sewn?"
Big Sister leaned forward. "Both. One of each."
Onesiphorous' heart skipped a cold, slow beat. "You jest."
"Would that I did."
Back in the City Imperishable, Slashed and Sewn had been implacable opponents, albeit through debate rather than murder. The Slashed were in a sense his. Onesiphorous had led the movement of discontented dwarfs who cut away their traditional lip stitches, abandoned fingertalk, and struggled for social and legal recognition. The Sewn clung to old ways, fighting to preserve the quiet power their kind had always weilded in the City Imperishable.
The two groups had come together only in the autumn of the past year, as the politics of the City Imperishable had for a while turned fatal. Onesiphorous and Bijaz, a leader of the Sewn, reluctantly cooperated to evacuate dwarf families from danger. Rather to his surprise, many of those then sent downriver to Port Defiance had since been in no hurry to return.
Now the dwarfs had found a new passion to divide them in novel and terrible ways.
"Do you know why they tried to kill you?"
She shrugged. "A message, perhaps. They shouted no slogans when they attacked, and had no dying words when I was finished with them."
"Will you exact further vengeance?" The Tribade was known for slow and thorough punishment.
"I would be forced to chastise half the dwarfs in this miserable place," Big Sister said. "I scarcely see the point. It should be enough that they do not return to their plotting. Let their fellows wonder."
"Wonder, indeed. My thanks for your restraint. What errand were you about before your interruption?"
She tapped her lips with an index finger. "There is a citizens' council forming. I was asked to participate."
"Ah." Port Defiance had been under the control of the City Imperishable since before the days of the long-vanished empire. Local lore held that the port had once been the seat of a mighty thalassocracy—something Onesiphorous found doubtful.
Various forms of governance had pertained over the centuries, ranging from a Judge-Intendant to a Board of Visitors to a Commissioner. In recent years, one local syndic or another had served by appointment as Harbormaster, who also stood as chief executive on behalf of the City Imperishable's Assemblage of Burgesses. That post was currently held by Borold Sevenships.
More to the point, administration of Port Defiance was not part of the Lord Mayor's responsibilities. Onesiphorous was here purely as a representative. He had no power over the affairs of this city. The Assemblage of Burgesses being in continued disarray, as a practical matter there was no higher authority attending to affairs here.
Hence, someone had dreamt up a citizens' council. "They intend treason?"
"They would scarcely name it that."
"Are dwarfs involved in this idiocy?"
"Yes. Slashed and Sewn alike."
Affairs in Port Defiance definitely needed tending to. He asked the next logical question. "Boxers?"
She nodded.
And there hung the crux of the thing. Should the traditional growing boxes be reduced to kindling and burned for a sacrifice? Or was there significance in being a dwarf of the City Imperishable once beyond those ancient, crumbling walls?
That was the crucial temptation here in Port Defiance: In a single generation, dwarfs could end their kind's time under the sun. Let the children grow freely. Once they were all full-men, no one would ever think to box a child again. Without the customs of the City Imperishable to constrain them, why would anyone subject their children to that terrible pain?
So said the Openers.
The Boxers decried the death of their race, the loss of their power, the melting of the dwarf families into the sea of full-men which covered the endless length of the world.
It was not a question of Slashed and Sewn, of politics and tradition. People would kill for tradition, but they would die for their children.
"Boxers." Onesiphorous drummed his fingers. He'd always detested the practice of boxing. Given all that business with the Old Gods after the Trial of Flowers, the purpose of dwarfs was so much more important: harbingers of the power and fortune of the City Imperishable.
Even though he'd spent years promoting the Slashed cause, he found himself in sympathy with the Boxers. He didn't want to imagine a world without dwarfs. The pain of the box was a price. What they gained for it could be debated endlessly, but his people did gain. Their home, the center of all things dwarf, was the City Imperishable.
And the City gained all the more. Civitas est.
"Why break away?" Onesiphorous let his line of thought drift loose.
"Control? Perhaps they fear reform at home." Big Sister leaned close. It was like being leered at by a homicidal grandmother. "I told them I'd meet with the council."
"Perhaps that was why someone sought to kill you."
One last smile. "See? You can listen if you put your mind to it."
With that, she was gone.
Onesiphorous let himself feel the gentle sway of the room a while as he watched the windows for the inbound vessel. Port Defiance was like a ship filled with unknown cargo, every crate a volatile surprise. He had no authority here, but neither did any council which might form.
And it galled him to trust the Tribade in this matter. Onesiphorous barely understood their ambitions, and he could imagine any number of advantages they might see in an independent Port Defiance.
He watched awhile, until even his untrained eyes could espy the sail visible beyond the curve of Barlowe's Finger.
Imago
"You are to be having an army as I am to be having a parade of washerwomen," said Captain Enero of the Winter Boys.
They were in Lord Mayor Imago's wedge-shaped office on the topmost level of the Rugmaker's Cupola. He'd moved two floors up from the tower's third level after the fall of the Imperator Restored to better his view and make a point about his oversight of the City Imperishable.
The floor was covered with hand-woven rugs, the walls papered over with maps, charts, and great running lists. Morning sunlight made a bright glare of his view south and west toward the river. He had not yet found time, or sufficient commitment, to relocate to the Limerock Palace. Besides, here he was under no one's control but his own.
Imago growled, a wordless mumble of frustration. He turned his remade chain of office over in his fingers, feeling the cool solidity of the new-cut gems. Finally: "I am well aware of that problem, my friend."
To say the training of the City Men had gone poorly would have been a kindness. The bailiffs had to a man refused transfer into the new force. Green Kelly's so-called Restorationists were disbanded, and no one sane wanted them under arms again. Most of Imago's early recruits had returned home to their jobs and families.
As a result, the walls of the City Imperishable continued to be guarded by the Winter Boys, a company of southern freeriders originally hired by the twice-late Imperator Restored prior to his accession to the Bladed Throne. Technically mutineers, Enero's men had acquitted themselves well opposing that brief, bloody reign.
Now they wanted to go home.
"I am to be receiving ever more pointed letters from the south," the mercenary commander added. "Higher authority is to be calling me home."
"Though the Tokhari have mostly departed, there are still several hundred Yellow Mountain tribesmen camped outside the River Gate." Imago rubbed his eyes—he was still troubled by the newly odd proportions of his body. "They seem in no hurry to return to their peaks."
"Men from the upper valleys. Until the high passes are clearin
g, there is being no point in their departure."
"I suppose they'd just fight if they rode home with the others."
"To be taking their women and horses, yes. This is being sport for them while awaiting the thaw."
A diffident knock echoed gently. Imago nodded and Enero tugged the handle.
It was Marelle, a pale dwarfess and one of the endless round of people seemingly needed to accomplish anything. "There is an incident in the street," she said. "At Little Loach Close, near the Spice Market."
"Fighting?" Imago and Enero shared a startled look.
"Not exactly. Arguing, I think." She glanced at a piece of paper clutched in her hand. "A runner came, from the Water Captain's office. They're worried."
Imago stumped across the room, each shortened footfall still a bit of a surprise, and took the despatch. The note was simple enough, written in a swift copperplate hand.
I urgently wish to inform the Lord Mayor of a disturbance in the Spice Market, requiring his full and immediate attention. Respectfully, Moraine Simpkins, Associate Water Captain, Northern Districts.
"No detail?"
"How would I know?" she asked with asperity. "A boy brought it in. He wanted two orichalks for his trouble. A runner, nothing more."
"I trust you tipped him?" Imago turned the note over. An ordinary piece of foolscap. The City bought the stuff by the wagonload from the Paper and Card Cooperative. Nothing to be learned from that.
"Boys are a city's best friend," she said.
Enero leaned over Imago's shoulder to look more closely at the letter. "You are to be going to the Spice Market now?"
"I've had a hankering for ginger all morning."
The curtained carriage rolled to a stop amid the racket of a crowd—not the full-throated roar of riot, but more like a festival out of place. Enero placed a finger on his lips and slipped a pistol from his belt. "Being a moment," he whispered, then pushed open the door and rolled out in a smooth, rapid motion.
Imago waited, bouncing impatiently on the leather bench. It would be beneath his dignity to draw the curtains and peer out.
How things have changed, he thought. During the desperate days of the Trial of Flowers, he would have been with Enero, sword in hand. But the Old Gods had made him over—now he was only four feet tall, with stumpy legs that pained every step. The wealth of the City Imperishable had been gleaned on the backs of the City's dwarfs, almost all of them specially grown so in their boxes. Being made short, on the other hand, galled him.
The pain was another matter. Jason might have reveled in it, but Jason had his own troubles now, grave-deep. Imago could hardly complain in the face of that.
The noise outside dissolved to raucous laughter. Enero opened the carriage door. "To be coming, then?"
"Of course," Imago said smoothly. He allowed the freerider to help him down.
There were hundreds here, if not more, spilling into the streets around the Spice Market. Someone was performing from the sound of it—another wave of laughter flowed across the crowd.
"To be following." Enero found his way to a wall.
They walked along the slimed brick, behind a series of stalls which reeked of roots and soil and dark things beneath the earth, before reaching a rickety wooden stair. Enero led the way up to a landing.
There Imago could see.
The Spice Market had ceased operation. At this hour there should have been buyers from the restaurants and chophouses, not to mention guildhalls, temples, and every other place with a kitchen. A great many people were going to be disappointed tonight if this gathering did not soon disperse.
From here he could see people crowded in around the market tables and standing amid the racks and barrels of peppers, herbs, and powders. Everyone watched a stage set up atop a large wagon, parked on the far side of the market from the landing Imago occupied. A white bear danced upon planks, wearing a harness of silver bells and blue silken cords. Three dark men with bone flutes played its tune. The only rhythm was the pounding of the bear's feet upon the wood.
Imago could not decide whether to be amused or irritated. "I was called out to see a dancing bear?"
"To be taking note of the men with flutes."
"I see," said Imago.
"From the north, I am to be thinking."
"You figure north because of the white bear?"
"I am thinking north because the Spice Market is being close to the River Gate."
The music came to a close in a skirling disharmony foreign to Imago's ears. The bear thumped its right foot three times on the planks and bowed. A shower of coins rose from the crowd to rattle onto the stage. The bear plucked a single bell from its harness and threw the bauble in a high overhand toss that seemed very human.
Imago watched hundreds of faces lift as the glittering bit flew in a great arc. He held out his hands. With the inevitability of prophecy, the bell landed there.
Enero grunted.
When the Lord Mayor looked back at the stage, the bear was gone, as were its pipers. A woman stood there now. She was of middling height, pale as any native of the City Imperishable, with chestnut hair. Not of Northern blood, despite Enero's assertion, though she wore Northern garb—a blue silk cloak matching the bear's harness, richly trimmed with pale fur. She did not appear to have any weapons about her. What she did have was the crowd's undivided attention.
"You have seen a spectacle." Her voice was ordinary, yet it carried across the expanse of the market square as firmly as if she were standing beside Imago. She turned and began to pace. The motion threw her cloak out in a billowing cloud the color of the sky. "Did it please you?"
The crowd roared their approval.
She stopped, the noise stopping with her. "Your city is nothing but spectacle. Your lives are a diversion. Madness came and went in your streets, and they called it flowers. I come to bring you a true spectacle. Worthy of your great City Imperishable and its timeless history. Worthy even of empire."
Her voice made that last word a spell and a curse at the same time, raising Imago's hackles.
The crowd roared once more. This time she waited them out. Impassive. Radiating cool power.
"She missed her calling," Imago said quietly. "The Burgesses could never stand before her."
"Your Burgesses are never being women, I am thinking."
"There is that. Thank the Old Gods she doesn't make her home here, or I'd be out of a job."
"I know something." The woman leaned forward slightly. The entire crowd leaned toward her in response. "I know where your secrets are buried." She straightened, threw her arms wide. "I know where your Imperator Terminus fell, to be entombed with his jeweled gods and his gold and silver treasures and coin enough to fund an army marching across half the world."
This brought a ragged cheer. "With your help, I can bring the power and the glory back to the City Imperishable." Her gaze locked with Imago's.
"By Dorgau's syphilitic paps," said the Lord Mayor.
Enero nodded. "You are being in great trouble, my friend."
Bijaz
He set out from the Temple of Inordinate Vice in search of lunch. Bijaz found two of Enero's Winter Boys astride their horses on the temple steps. Both smiled to see him.
"To be having the time for coming now, little dwarf?" asked Malvo, a grinning ape of a man with whom Bijaz had spent time drinking. He had three wives and four children, or perhaps the reverse, in ports along the Sunward Sea.
"To be having a choice, polygamist?"
"Ah, he is gaming." Malvo added something rapid in a Sunward language Bijaz did not speak. The Winter Boy hauled the dwarf bodily onto the cantle of his saddle. A spray of orange butterflies erupted like so much bright fire. "We are being off now."
It was not a pleasant ride. The only virtue of the trip was brevity. The midday streets were crowded, with a strange rhythm to the traffic which reminded Bijaz of the unrest of the past autumn. The ride along Cork Street was especially annoying due to a right-of-way dispute
with the tram. Soon enough they were across the Bridge of Chances and hieing up Nannyback Hill, deep into the territory of the Numbers Men—a locale Bijaz avoided of late.
He preferred to stay south of the Little Bull as much as possible. The Numbers Men had been his patrons, saviors even, yet he felt a profound discomfort whenever his thoughts turned to them.
The rapid pace was a favor, he realized. Bijaz's divinity was well known in the City Imperishable—hence the open doors and welcome tables at every turn. He was widely considered a dwarfen symbol of the City's luck. As such he found it difficult to wander freely without being accosted time and again.