by Kate Diamond
“No, nothing of note,” Arden reassured nem, “unless you consider the governor of Rysen adding a second spring holiday to the calendar to be urgent news.”
The commander laughed at that. “He has? Perhaps we should consider that here. I would appreciate some more time with my children. Well then,” ney finished, “you have my approval; carry on your business.”
The guards returned to their watch, leaving Miris, Arden, and Belest to cross the vine-draped bridge linking the garden and the weaver’s roof, as the youngest of the weaver’s apprentices crept away from their work to catch glimpses of the Winds and their fliers. The older ones, who had grown accustomed to the comings and goings of cloudships over the years, stayed at their looms, to the satisfaction of their master, who allowed nir errant students a handful more moments of freedom before calling them back to their work and scolding them for their inattention.
They would have chances later, if they dared risk their master’s disapproval; the Winds would stay with their cloudships while their fliers ventured into the city.
Remembering the guard commander’s fears, Miris slowed nir steps. A healer and a trader flying together was a vanishingly rare sight, and would only alarm or confuse those they met.
Arden stopped beside nem. “What is it?”
“This won’t do. We’ll attract too much attention, two fliers travelling together.”
Arden hummed and nodded. “You’re right. And I don’t know what help I can be to you. I’ve never seen these Stars.”
“I can investigate the markets and talk to the guards. Perhaps they’ve seen something odd in recent imports. And maybe I can get an audience with the governor.”
“And I ought to visit the hospital and see what aid I can give.”
Miris noted the angle of the sun. Any one of those things could easily take the rest of the day.
“We can meet here at sunset, if we don’t find anything sooner, and find a place to stay for the night.” Ney turned, and found Belest waiting patiently and silently a few steps behind. What to do with him… “Belest, go with Arden. You’ll recognize the lamps,” ney decided. Ney could work better on nir own, without the presence of a stranger to confuse those ney approached. And Arden would need someone to talk to.
Obediently, Belest nodded. Plans made, Miris strode off down a side street and across another bridge, heading towards Tilsa’s southern market district.
◆◆◆
“Well, I don’t know about you, but I think it’s time for a good meal,” Arden declared once Miris had left. “What do you say?”
Belest wondered for a moment whether this was a somewhat transparent attempt to cheer him, but Arden had been nothing but earnest since he arrived, and it would be unfair to doubt him. Belest appreciated it in any case, as he was also hungry, and he certainly didn’t have the first idea about how to navigate Tilsa. He agreed, and let Arden lead him up a curving ramp to a plaza that seemed more garden than street, where a musician played a pipe to entertain passers-by.
Arden turned onto a street that passed through a series of pavilions, a tunnel through the city’s stone towers lined with shops and homes. The path took them past a bookshop bustling with students in scholars’ robes, a cobbler’s shop, and what must have been a mosaic workshop, for one entire wall inside was decorated with the image of goldfish in a pond, and more panels sat half-finished on the floor and against the walls. The ceiling above them was not covered in greenery like the exterior architecture; instead it was painted in bright patterns and lined with lamps to supplement the light coming in from outside.
And then they were out in the open again, and the air was full of the scents of cooking: meats and spices and bread and cakes. Arden evidently knew exactly where he was going; he strode right across the plaza, past people selling skewered meat and stuffed buns and roasted vegetables, and called out to a woman tossing noodles in a tremendous pan.
“Fela! Order for two!”
The woman glanced up from her cooking, her wrinkled face breaking into a grin. “Arden! Where have you been? Off travelling the world, rescuing people from dire peril, no doubt.”
“Nothing so dramatic as all that, I am sad to say,” Arden reported with a theatrical sigh. “Travelling far-off lands, yes, but for study.”
“So I see, so I see,” Fela said, nodding indulgently as if to a beloved child. She poured a dark sauce over the noodles and tossed them again, before turning her gaze to Belest. “And you’ve found yourself a lover at last?”
“A friend,” Arden corrected, startling Belest, who hadn’t expected to be accorded even that much.
“Ah, good news even so.”
Fela scooped heaping portions of noodles into two paper cones and handed them over the counter, refusing the payment of a metal charm Arden offered.
“I have enough trinkets in my pockets already, young man, I don’t need more. You take that and eat, and if you’re staying the night in Tilsa, you can come and tell me of your adventures. And bring that fellow along with you, I’m certain I can find room.”
They sat to eat on a bench overlooking the level below, a park where children chased butterflies and couples walked together past sprays of bright flowers. The city was by turns claustrophobic and open, full of green parks and clear fountains alongside ranks of high towers and the tight tunnels that passed through and around them. How much work did it take to keep everything running, Belest wondered, and who made the decisions? He pondered this as he picked at the food with the provided eating-sticks, finding shreds of meat and vegetable clinging to wide chewy noodles coated in a sticky sauce, pungent and spicy and altogether new to him. It was delicious, not that Belest would have complained had it been otherwise, and he sat for a while eating in silence, watching the city. Arden too was looking out at the towers and terraces spread before them, but his attention was somewhere else, Belest sensed.
“If you’d asked me before,” Arden said at last, “I would have said you couldn’t name any place more different from Mafenra than Tilsa.”
From all he had said, Belest had to agree. Arden gestured with his sticks out at the highest of the towers. “Once you get inland from Corum and the other coastal cliff cities there’s really nothing like this in Wytar, or the surrounding countries. Chefir dwellings are single-story, and they tend to favor wood and brick over stone. But the rooftop gardens… now that’s something they share with Tilsa. Almost every house has something growing on top, whether it’s for food or medicine or simply because it’s beautiful. They grow amazing things with Seeds, far beyond most human creations. Berries that treat disease, teas for energy and warmth, fruit that can survive frost. And the most beautiful flowers you’ve ever seen. On warm nights, they drag pillows up and sleep on the roofs. ”
Belest thought of some of the blossoms he’d glimpsed at Summertooth and imagined gardens full of them. Another sight he would never enjoy.
“They work with Seeds more often than humans do?” he asked, remembering Miris’s words on spirits and the mortal races.
“Far more.” Arden paused a moment in thought. “In fact,” he continued, “each Chefir child is paired at birth with a Seed. And each village has a special garden where the spirits live, growing tall flowers for their people. A Chefir’s flower has a blossom for every year of life, and the color tells something about how that year was for them. Yellow for pain, blue for learning, white for joy, purple for change. An especially good year for the village is called a white-blossom year, and a sad one is a yellow-blossom year.”
“Truly?” Belest at last caught Arden’s grin and the amusement glittering in his eyes. “You’re making this up!” he accused.
Arden burst into laughter and smacked him on the shoulder. “That took you long enough. How much did you believe?”
Belest, though a little chagrined, couldn’t help but laugh at himself. “Up until the part about the colors,” he admitted.
“Oh, the names for years are real, at least, though I never lea
rned the origin of the phrases. Pairing children with spirits, now, that came from a popular book the students shared with me. Saiketh on the Island, it was called, about a pregnant fisherwoman shipwrecked on a mysterious island populated by earth spirits and overgrown with their creations. After her twin children are born, she finds two flowers outside her cave, and the growth of the flowers reflects events in their lives.”
He finished his meal, and crumpled the empty cone in his hands before dropping it in the tub provided for waste, earning himself angry squawks from a bird that had perched there to pick at scraps.
“They do work with Seeds, especially their doctors, I didn’t invent that part either. They can talk to the spirits in ways humans have never figured out. But I’ll warn you,” Arden said with another friendly nudge, “talking about a Chefir’s flower is… well, somewhat rude, if you take my meaning.”
Belest did, and they both laughed.
“Well, I suppose we should make some use of ourselves,” Arden said. “There’s an Iltari hospital in the next district over, I’m sure they could use some extra hands. Will you join me?”
What else would he do, alone in an unfamiliar place? “I don’t know anything about medicine,” Belest admitted.
Arden shrugged. “Don’t need to know much to be helpful. Talk to the people who come in, listen to what they tell you, pass me things when I ask, it’s fairly simple, really.”
Belest wasn’t convinced, but Arden’s confidence was catching, and he allowed that to buoy his hopes as they headed through yet another covered street and along the vine-draped balcony paths that ran the edge of the district. The scenery wasn’t the only thing that drew the eye - the people did too. So many of them milling around in so many different styles of clothing. They weren’t all human either. Belest spotted several cat-like Kejan among the crowd. There a tall Forish haggled over rolls of fabric, there another furred figure he couldn’t name sold sacks of something or other to a bustling line of customers.
Soon they came to a set of pavilions tucked away behind a narrow street, a structure Belest on his own might have missed entirely if not for the orange pennant flying from the highest point. Even he knew what that symbolized: aid to those in need. The carved image of a two-headed god guarded the doors, holding a different symbol in each of four hands.
“Akendi and Akari, the Iltari gods of healing,” Arden explained. “They hold fire, for comfort and welcome. The knife, to cut away sickness. The flower, to prepare as medicine. And water, for purifying.”
One of the figure’s blank-eyed faces was set in stern lines, while the other was softer and kinder. Belest wondered briefly which was Akendi and which was Akari.
The doors opened onto a crescent-shaped hall two pavilions high and lined with wooden benches. People waited there, old and young, in garments worn and new, Tilsan robes and foreign dress. The space had an atmosphere to it, not the tense anxiety of a doctor’s chambers or the warm peace of a temple, but something different, a feeling of caring and of pains eased.
It was also brighter than Belest expected, and he quickly saw the reason why: Flameforged lamps set in niches in the walls. Surely an extravagance, he thought, before he noted the wildly mismatched styles of the bulbs and varying degrees of tarnish on the fittings. Donations, perhaps, from sponsors of the hospital, or gifts from grateful patients?
He didn’t have time to ponder the matter - in the moment he had spent studying the lamps, Arden had nearly vanished through a small and almost invisible doorway at the right point of the crescent. Belest hurried after him, heading up a curving ramp and pushing through a curtain to a balcony that ran along the inner curve of the crescent, overlooking on one side the entry hall and on the other a maze of corridors and small rooms where healers examined patients, and even smaller rooms holding boxes of supplies and shelves lined with bottles of medicines. From this vantage one could see all the waiting patients and the healers coming and going, and could easily direct aid where needed to be sure nobody was forgotten.
The space had been a temple once; its history was clearly written in the high ceilings and in the remnants of an altar at the far wall. All of that now had been given over to the healers. Even the high ceilings had been put to use. Thin cords suspended on pulleys ran from room to room above the walls and up to stations at the overseer’s bridge, carrying notes and small packages, hanging like a spinner’s web above the wide hall. The sacred fire remained, though, burning in its hearth behind an elaborate grate, a few steps out of the way of a back corridor. A figure in novice green sat on a worn bench beside it, head bowed in prayer. As Belest watched, another approached the flame and waited patiently for her to come out of her trance, and then took her place with a small nod.
“Move aside, please-”
Belest ducked out of the way of a junior overseer; the young man reached out to pin a folded piece of paper to the line and spun the crank to send it to its destination down below, in a room where a doctor tended to two children.
“Are you here to work?” the overseer asked when he was done. “You should talk to the chief.” He nodded towards a figure sitting at a desk at the center of the bridge. Arden was already there and deep in lively conversation; Belest hesitated a moment, fearing he’d delayed them, but Arden only smiled and beckoned him over.
The head overseer on duty, a middle-aged third named Nesu, greeted him warmly. “I see you appreciating my message-strings?”
Ney wore the orange and white hood of an Iltari master, under which nir eyes shone with kindness and intelligence. So this was the designer of the system? Questions crowded his mind, questions about construction and stability, weaknesses and benefits. “How long did it take to get it all set up? And where did you get the idea?”
Nesu raised a bushy eyebrow. “So we have a machinist here, eh? Most people don’t spare it so much thought. It took maybe half a year, all told, between getting the things up there and teaching everyone how to use them, not to mention convincing the Order I wasn’t utterly mad to go through with it…”
An assistant appeared beside them, holding a sheaf of notes in a leather folder. “Master Nesu, there’s some papers that need approval.”
“Leave them here, Samil, I’ll get to them momentarily.” Nesu shifted a stack of account books to make space on nir desk. “As for the idea,” ney continued, “I can hardly take all the credit for it. My nieces came up with it, wanting to exchange letters with their friends after curfew. I was too impressed to scold them for it!” Ney laughed. “So I don’t know how long they kept at it before their mother found out. But remember this, young man, the best inspiration can come from the most mundane of places. And you can never underestimate determined youth.”
“Do you have to make everything a lesson, Nesu?” Arden asked, more affectionate than annoyed.
“Of course,” was nir immediate response. “An eager mind like his? I’d be a fool not to teach him all I can.”
“It’s impressive,” Belest said, swallowing the rest of his curiosity. “It must be very helpful.”
“Aye, and it frees up the novices for better work than message-running,” Nesu said, flipping through the papers as ney talked. “We train new healers here, as Them Above will it, and that’s hard to do when your students are little more than glorified mail ponies.”
Even sparing that, there was a great deal to be done, and the overseers and healers both welcomed anyone willing to take on a share of their endless work. Nesu, after a quick consultation of a slate on nir desk, assigned Arden to one of the healers’ rooms to give the man working there a much-needed respite. Belest turned to follow him, but Samil put a hand on his shoulder to pull him back.
“Nay, we need you elsewhere,” Nesu said. Ney turned to Samil. “Rubie’s short a hand today, with Daya off at the university, and she’s already asked for more help…”
“You think he can handle her?”
“He came in here on the heels of a flier, he can handle anything,” Nesu said, an
d marked something down on nir slate.
“Right. Come with me.” Nobody had asked whether he agreed, though he was in no position to argue. Samil strode off through another doorway, and Belest followed. It seemed that was all he had done in recent months, follow others and hope their decisions proved right. But if he could do anything to help, it would be worth it.
Down on the main floor, the hospital felt so much busier than it had from the entry hall or even the overseer’s bridge. Assistants directed patients from room to room as baskets flew overhead. People strode past in masters’ orange and novice green, and some with bare heads. Belest even glimpsed a cleric in a black scarf, serving here, Samil explained, to treat those pains that needed words to ease them.
Wooden placards hung on nails outside each of the rooms, marked not only with numbers but also with symbols - simple shapes in various colors, carved and painted and placed there to guide visitors who couldn’t read the local script. Samil stopped at one of these doors and knocked on the frame.
“Rubie!” he called, “I’ve brought you an assistant. Nesu says to be nice to him.”
Over the shuffling of items on shelves, Belest heard, “It’s about time, I’m up to my fangs in work today. So ney’s finally decided to listen to me about what I need instead of deciding ney knows everything about how to run the place?”
The woman who emerged from behind the curtain was short and stout and not at all human. Glossy scales covered much of her skin in various shades of purple, and the fingers wrapped around the handle of a message-basket were tipped with claws. Her grey robe was split in the back to make room for a tail that brushed the floor. A spray of flowers fastened to two curving horns decorated her smooth head, and in place of a Naming necklace she wore a collar of flat blue turquoise beads.