by Jay Lake
The freerider extended his hand, helped Bijaz to his feet. "Men are to be dying now, men are to be dying later. It is being sad, but her message was being too dangerous to your city."
"The mountebank is gone?"
"I am being told she passed the Sudgate an hour gone now."
"I wouldn't like to take a wagon down the river road." Bijaz's brother had been a factor, before being seduced by the Jade Rush. He knew perfectly well how goods moved up and down the Saltus.
"To being sure, but I am thinking she can be taking care of herself."
He thought of ice-blue eyes and some foul drug in ale so strong no one would notice. Oddly, he missed her. "Ashkoliiz," Bijaz said. "Her name is Ashkoliiz."
"The Lord Mayor comes," someone shouted from further down Water Street.
"We are to be explaining ourselves now." Enero began walking.
"There were no monsters this time." Bijaz trotted after him. "Nothing evil from the noumenal world."
Except for himself, of course. Except himself.
The inside of Ducôte's scriptorium was silent. Even the great steam engine at the back barely grumbled, its fires banked while the press it drove was quiet for the night. The old dwarf sat wrapped in a dressing gown, grumpy as ever. Biggest Sister had arrived as well, representing the Tribade. Otherwise they were Enero, Imago, Bijaz himself, and Marelle.
Just like the dark days of winter, Bijaz thought. They lacked only Jason.
"I wish Onesiphorous was here." Imago looked around. "I will need to send him a letter by fast packet, warning him of the mountebank. Her game should mean little in Port Defiance—they have no great love for our history there."
"Nor here, I am thinking," grumbled Ducôte. "Fifteen dead, I heard."
What Ducôte heard made the morning broadsheets.
Imago looked around, catching their eyes one by one. "A terrible brawl, lamentable deaths, brought on by that scheming con woman and her dancing bear."
"It was not—" Bijaz began.
Biggest Sister interrupted. "You did not go unnoticed."
A shadow stirred, then the Card King stepped into the light. Without his suit and wig he was just a fat man in a grubby tunic. "Some of us had our plans."
"Some of us might have known that," Imago snapped. "There are powers and powers here, and Dorgau knows I make respect my business, but I am the Lord Mayor."
"You're missing the point!" Bijaz shouted. "I killed them! All of them!"
"You were not to be trampling men," Enero said gently.
"I started the damned riot."
"Stop," said Imago. "Go pray if you need to. Or drink. Or cry. But I asked you to turn back the mountebank because you are the only one of us who can call those powers to defend the City Imperishable."
"I didn't defend the City. I killed some lumbermen."
"Self-pity doesn't become you." Biggest Sister's foot tapped, impatience flickering. "There has been death. I expect there will be compensation. But what could have been was far worse. As it happens, I know you first tried a simpler tack. That the woman did not let you succeed. She raised the stakes."
"Stakes." What Three-Widows had reminded Bijaz of.
"Stakes," said Imago, his voice gentle. "You have turned away the greatest threat since the Imperator Restored. How many died in Terminus Plaza that day? You had no more blame then than now."
"I . . . " He stopped trying to convince them of the horror he'd wrought on those men. There were witnesses—everyone else in the bar, to begin with. But who knew what was true after a riot? Especially in the City Imperishable, with recent, raw memories of the noumenal.
"My good Ducôte," Imago went on. "I would never dream of asking an honest printer such as yourself to carry my words in your broadsheets, but if the public were to understand the true role this despicable mountebank played in creating this sad riot, they might realize that brighter days will only return with honest toil and long patience."
By Dorgau's brazen nipple, he is arguing before a court again, Bijaz thought. Imago hadn't been in such rare form in quite some time. The Lord Mayor's afternoon must have gone well.
Ducôte hawked and spat, making the brass pot by his desk ring. "I'll not bend for you, but the truth will out. I want trouble no more than you do. I do live by this riverfront, after all."
"Fair enough." Imago looked around. "Dwarfess Marelle, meanwhile, has shown unexpected talents. We've recovered some documents which may help us ascertain whatever truth lies behind the mountebank's assertions—"
"Ashkoliiz," said Bijaz stubbornly. He was going to get one thing right tonight.
"Ashkoliiz." Imago gave Bijaz a narrow-eyed look. "They will be in the Hall of Maps, at the Rugmaker's Cupola. I have reached an understanding with the Worshipful Guild, which will keep casual visitors out until we determine what it is we have. Should any of you feel a sudden rush of insight, please lend us your wisdom. No one else will be aware of what we're about."
He plays the City's stakes again. The Lord Mayor was not made for administration, he was made for the great games of state. They would need Onesiphorous back from Port Defiance soon, or find someone else capable of filling that role of chamberlain and major-of-the-palace.
"I would go pray," Bijaz announced. In truth was the last thing he wished. But he needed to be alone with his thoughts. "I will find my own way to the Temple District," he added, as Enero and Imago exchanged glances.
He slipped out into the night, wishing for some footpad with a cosh to take him unawares. It seemed unlikely he was unguarded, but a dwarf could always hope.
Ashkoliiz, he thought. Her name is Ashkoliiz.
Onesiphorous
He awoke from hot dreams of drowning. Someone was knocking on his door. Onesiphorous had been granted a dwelling near the bottom tier of a narrow, tall building which clung to the west face of The Boot. He occupied a level and half, an open space like an artist's studio with a high ceiling and a balcony built within. He enjoyed a view of the western sky over the jungles of the Jade Coast, currently brightening with the morning.
It was scarcely a mark of the Harbormaster's respect to set him so low to the water.
The door again, he realized. It was not the knock of an angry mob, accompanied by hinges breaking. This was almost diffident.
Not Big Sister then. She would have simply slipped the lock and entered.
He groaned, rolled out of the niggardly rope bed, and tugged on a dressing gown. It was after dawn, he might as well be awake.
Negotiating the ladder down to the floor, Onesiphorous was glad that he'd carried so little with him through life. This apartment held nothing but clothes and a few books. That made for a bare floor, safe for stumbling unshod and half-awake.
At the door, he realized the spy hole was placed for a full-man. Nothing for it but to open up. He tugged.
The boy Boudin stood outside. Today he was dressed oddly—a fur vest, homespun trousers, bare feet, and a small, soft cap which he currently twisted between his hands.
"You've been paid," Onesiphorous said roughly. He was still irked that the boy had told Big Sister of the Alate's bell.
"Nah, she ta'k different this day, ah." Even the boy's accent had changed.
It dawned on Onesiphorous that he was seeing a swamp rat—though surely they called themselves something else. Boudin had come from the people who'd lived here when this was the South Coast, long before the Jade Rush or even the slow spread of exiled money which had built the plantations.
Curiosity battled irritation. "What do you want?"
"This day a benny day you come, ah."
Hah, thought Onesiphorous. Someone, somewhere in the local hierarchy was getting worried. That the touch came from people at the bottom of the ladder didn't worry him. Years of being a Slashed activist in the City Imperishable had made Onesiphorous quite familiar with the breadth of that rung. Still, he had to play this right. "Come with you where?"
"See she, ah. Come up the blackwater." Boudin stoppe
d twisting his cap and straightened, shifting his voice to the more ordinary accent of Port Defiance. "It will be worth your ride, sir. I promise."
"Right. I'll meet you at the tie-up in ten minutes."
Boudin nodded enthusiastically. Onesiphorous shut the door and went looking for clean knickers.
He was down quickly enough, a mug of tea in one hand. Onesiphorous had also tucked some money in an inner pocket. He was wary of giving insult, but he was equally wary of going without resources. Boudin waited in his little boat.
The Boot was a northerly island in Port Defiance's constellation of points of land. It actually lay in the Saltus delta proper, where the water ran muddy and slow when the tide was out, but gray and fast when the tide was in. Shoreline spread east and west. The ragged jungle made a tracery of the bottom of the heavens.
He stepped into Boudin's boat, hoping that there would be no saltwater tumbles today.
The boy's hat was back on his head. It was a cone of orange felt in morning daylight.
"Show me the way," he said.
"She benny this day, ah." Boudin smiled and set to his oars.
They crabbed across the current, in effect rowing upstream to drift down. Boudin seemed to know where the boat was headed without ever turning to look. Onesiphorous simply watched the shore.
He'd only recently come south from the City Imperishable aboard a steam packet. The captain had been a City man, though most of his crew were sailors from the cities of the Sunward Sea. They were deepwater boys working the river a season or two to avoid summer storms on the ocean. The packet had stayed mid-current to avoid snags as the captain muttered darkly about brigand apes and raiding birds along the shore.
Onesiphorous had received the clear impression that only a lunatic would go ashore in these foetid, fevered jungles.
At the time that had suited him just fine. He was a City dwarf, after all—pavers beneath his feet were his natural estate. So far as he was concerned, trees existed largely to give dogs a place to piss.
The politics of this port city were maddening, though. And no one would talk to him but Big Sister, who'd shipped down as a deckhand on the same steam packet.
So he went ashore. Great, tall trees with a cluster of knees stood right at the water's edge, apparently without benefit of beach. Vines tangled between their glossy dark green leaves, some thick as the trunks of the lindens back home. Sharp-nosed creatures with striped tails ran along their extents, disturbing birds and drawing mournful hoots from the deeper shadows. Beneath it all the water disappeared into shadow as well, only pale green bushes showing the way. Too pale, too green.
"She say no draw you hands down in her water, ah."
Onesiphorous looked down. Something longer than the boat paced them, a sinuous crest barely breaking the muddy surface.
He looked up again as Boudin shipped the oars and they passed into shadow.
He didn't miss the roll of the ocean until it vanished with the sunlight. The jungle swallowed that sound, along with the wheel and cry of the sea birds and the distant bells from Port Defiance. In the course of a few boat lengths, that world was gone.
Here within the shadows of the great trees, the air was thicker, heavier. Birds cawed by ones and twos. Smaller sounds echoed, bubbles and squeaks and slow burps which might have been the water itself roiling, or the steam of muddy life beneath the knob-kneed trunks.
Boudin laid his oars in the bottom of the boat and drew out a short, broad-bladed paddle. "Slow now, ah," he said with a grin. The boy's tan looked walnut-dark in here. His teeth gleamed to match his eyes. The pacing crest still followed them, but it gave the paddle some distance.
"Your people live here?" Onesiphorous asked.
"Ah."
Slow dips of the paddle. The air continued to move fitfully, as if it lacked ambition.
"Not plantation men, not jade miners."
"Slugs, she call 'em."
"Slugs?"
"Pale, slow, and full of juice, ah." Boudin laughed. He didn't seem so young now. In the shadows that conical hat was pale and indistinct, blurring the shape of the boy's head.
Onesiphorous wanted to ask who "she" was, but he held his tongue. Boudin was different here, under the trees. Time for a smart City dwarf to listen with eyes and ears.
Boudin paddled for more than an hour. The boy wasn't marking his way—there was no possibility that Onesiphorous could pick a return path through the trees. So he just watched.
Land began to appear after a while. Little hummocks at first, nothing more than rotting deadfalls. Soon he could see soil on them, sprouting plants, vines, even grassy mounds.
The long fin dropped away, whatever it had been. A whole troop of animals crashed through the trees, pacing the boat with whistles and calls.
Flowers, too—big, fleshy blossoms resting in shallow water. They were the color of marbled fat and smelled like a dead dog. Insects the size of his hand buzzed the blossoms, dark and indistinct. Onesiphorous had no ambition to meet them up close.
The water became channels, the hummocks became islands. Boudin finally beached the boat on a little mud bank no different from a dozen others they'd passed.
"Go with respect now, ah." The boy climbed over the bow. "Benny dwarf do benny well."
"Respect." Onesiphorous clambered after. "Always."
Boudin clapped a hand on his shoulder. "She know you, ah. Else you no come."
They walked a few dozen yards through blossoming bushes to reach a little clearing. Seven of the great-kneed trees surrounded it, these growing out of dirt rather than water. An old woman sat on a misshapen chair. Her skin was dusky.
She was knitting.
Onesiphorous realized that Boudin had not stepped out of the bushes with him. He slowly approached the woman. The air felt strange, almost like taffy.
"Hello," he said. "I was called here."
She knitted a few strokes more before looking up at him. Her eyes were filmy. "Welcome, holy City man."
"I'm not holy." He looked around for a place to sit, then felt foolish. There was nothing in this clearing but her.
"You expecting maybe a hut, with chickens and lizards?"
"I don't know, ma'am. I don't know anything about your people."
The needles clicked again. "You thinking Boudin he maybe tell your secrets, but you come anyway."
"An invitation, ma'am." He paused, then plunged onward. "I'm here to find things out. Port Defiance is not what I thought it might be."
"What you see, when the boy row you out to the Old Tower?"
Barlowe's Finger? "I saw the city. I saw the Sunward Sea. I saw the shore."
"Ah." She continued to knit.
The invitation was clear. "People, spread out from rock to island, from island to rock. They don't face the City Imperishable anymore. If they ever did. They face south, and east, toward the cities of the Sunward Sea."
This time he got a hard look as the needles paused. "What you think Port Defiance be defying, ah?"
He'd wondered that. "The ocean. They cling to those rocks and weather what the sea brings them."
"My people, we got a story." The needles clicked again. "Everything a story for my people, but this story different. Long time there was a city here, different city than now. Twin city to the big stone house upriver where you come from. Like twins, they fight. Like twins, they stand together. One hand and other hand, anyone come upon them, they join. World, she bigger than a man's life. Ocean, she bigger than a man's life. City, she just a town got too much money. World never die, ocean never die, city, she die.
"So this one time, the twins they fighting. It don't matter what, every story tell that different, but they fighting. Sea King, he come out of water looking for boys and girls and bright gold to lie cold on the ocean bottom. This twin here, she say, 'ah, Sea King come, be helping us now.' T'other twin, stone house upriver, she say, 'no be no Sea King, you must of eat bad oysters.'
"So the Sea King, he pull the city down. Your Port D
efiance, they disobey the Sea King. Them islands? They the towers of the old city. You go down, look inside rocks, you see."
Onesiphorous watched her knit awhile. This didn't sound like any history he knew. Port Defiance was on the verge of defying the City Imperishable—it didn't matter who they'd challenged in mythic depths of history. "What does this mean today?"
"Ah." The needles flashed. "You ask question longtime enough, you find answer. Stone twin got its hatred too. Land have powers just like sea. When trees come walking to you stone house walls, what you going do, ah? Remember history, or become history."