by Liz Williams
The great day had arrived, just as the broker had said when she’d called last night. Mrs Pa couldn’t quite bring herself to trust the broker; you heard so many stories. Still disbelieving, she inserted a coin into the counter slot. A thick spike of incense, red as embers, rattled down into the tray. A foolish machine, Mrs Pa thought. The incense might break. Crossing the courtyard to the brazier she stuck the stick firmly into the pan, patting down the sand to keep it upright. She touched her lighter to the tip of the incense, and a column of smoke threaded up into the polluted air. Mrs Pa watched its passage to heaven with satisfaction. Good. Now for the next thing.
The courtyard was filling up fast, everyone shaking the telling sticks, concentrating like mad, a possessed woman (there was always one) weaving between. Her hands were full of chrysanthemum blooms which she ate methodically, petal by petal.
Mrs Pa threaded her way between the questioners and made her way out onto Shaopeng, where she was obliged to wait forty minutes for the next tram. Finally the rails hummed, and then the tram itself rattled into view at the end of Shaopeng Street. Passengers, desperate to get to work before they got fined, wrestled their way into the nearest carriage. There were too many people; arguments broke out along the margins. Mrs Pa, unresisting, let herself be carried on the flow through the doors and found herself in the centre of the car, staring up at the ceiling. She could see nothing else. How would she know when they reached Ghenret? She could not remember the number of stops. She poked a young woman in the back; uninterested dark eyes looked down at her.
“Are you going to the harbour?”
“No, Paugeng,” the young woman said. She wore a technician’s overalls and the scarlet badge of Paugeng blazed above her breast.
“I am,” someone said. “I’ll tell you when we get there.”
Mrs Pa squinted up. The handsome face turned to hers was pale; the golden eyes filled with amusement. A demon! Mrs Pa thought, startled. It had been a long time since she’d seen one of his kind; she’d thought she had lost the gift, if gift it was. Everyone else seemed to be ignoring him: probably they really couldn’t see that he was there. Mrs Pa wondered whether to summon a charm against him, then dismissed the thought. At least someone had some manners, but what a poor pass, that even Hellkind were nicer to you than your own these days.
“Thank you, young man,” she said, under her breath. The demon smiled. He had sharp teeth, too, she noticed. After Murray Town, the crowd thinned out and Mrs Pa could just about see through the murky window of the carriage.
“Where are we now?” Mrs Pa asked.
“Not far,” the soft voice said. “Look, there’s the Senditreya Endo. What’s left of it, anyway.”
Mrs Pa peered through the window. The iron doors of the ruined temple appeared briefly in view; the dome of the vaults catching the morning sun. They said that the Dowsing Guild was rebuilding it, and would rededicate it to someone else, but they didn’t seem to have got very far. The walls were still a tumble of masonry.
“Next stop’s Ghenret,” the demon said.
“Thank you,” Mrs Pa said again. The demon nodded and when the little knot of passengers spilled out onto the Ghenret platform, he was gone, moving quickly through the crowd.
Mrs Pa walked slowly to the market, the next stop in her preparations. It was a long walk for an elderly lady from the platform to Ghenret harbour, and she took it slowly. It was still quite early. The crowd who had got off the downtown had dispersed and the walkway was quiet. She could hear the oily tide lapping against the harbour wall. The film that coated the waves collected the light and held it, sending pale mottled shadows across the surface of the water. The warehouse go-downs filed along the edge of the harbour, dwarfed by the snaking tower. The logo of Paugeng Pharmaceuticals, identical to the red badge on the unhelpful girl’s clothing, was emblazoned over one side. Up there, away from the little world, lived Jhai Tserai. But whatever they might say about Jhai, she was reputed to be generous to her employees, and she was such a pretty girl, too. They looked after you in Paugeng, up to a point, of course. Mrs Pa had wanted her daughter Mai to apply there one day, rather than becoming a cleaner like her mother, but it hadn’t happened. Never mind. Her daughter would soon be settled now. Mrs Pa was conscious of a delayed relief, so enormous that she had not allowed herself to feel it that morning. She had been waiting so long that she thought it would never come, and now it had.
The go-down market had been open since four that morning. Most of the best stuff had gone, but there were still things to be found if you knew people, and Mrs Pa knew a great many. She had lived here most of her life, after all. She moved through the canopied alleys, squeezing oranges, stuffing pak choi and marsh-grown water chestnuts into her battered bag, and keeping up a constant litany of conversation with her neighbours.
“You’re buying a lot today,” Miss Reng probed, eyeing the bulging bag.
“A special occasion!” Mrs Pa teased her.
“What would that be?” So Mrs Pa, making the most of her big news, told her. Miss Reng gave a shriek of excitement, making people look round.
“Mai! Your daughter, getting married? How wonderful!”
Mrs Pa said, “That’s right. I found out yesterday. It’s only to be expected, of course.”
“Of course,” Miss Reng agreed, a little too quickly.
The news would be all over the district by noon. Mrs Pa, well pleased, lugged her shopping home and sat in her kitchen with a boiling kettle on the stove, waiting for the neighbours to drop by. She was not disappointed. A constant stream of people knocked on the door, on one pretext or another, throughout the day. Yes, it was true. Yes, she was so pleased, although, of course, she’d been expecting it. Mrs Pa started cooking well before dusk. Her anticipation grew. At last the phone call came.
“I’m sorry, mother, the line’s not very good. I had problems getting through.” On the other end, Mai’s voice was thin and disembodied. “Are you pleased?”
“Married! I can’t believe it. It’s wonderful. Where are you going to hold the ceremony? Had you thought?” Mrs Pa asked.
“There’s a special boat … It’s called Precious Dragon. It’s coming to the city next week, you can get married on it. Ahn and I thought it would be nice.”
“I’ll call his parents.” her mother said.
Giggling and chattering, they went into the details of the wedding. It was a terrible line, crackling as usual, but Mai explained everything twice, and then Mrs Pa told her daughter about the cooking. “I’ll send it over tonight, as soon as it’s ready.”
“Oh, mother! That’s so good of you.” Mai talked on even as the line deteriorated, but at last they hung up and Mrs Pa, as she had promised, rang the bridegroom’s parents in preparation for the wedding that had, at last, arrived.
3
She had not left the vaults for years, and now the summons had come. Embar Dea swam out through West Iron Gate, feeling the heavy gush of water along her flanks as the gate drew to a close. The soft, muffled clang that it made as it shut echoed along the channel. Embar Dea moved swiftly, seeking to overcome fear. How long had it been since she had passed this way? Thirty years? After that last journey she had been confined to the peace and silence of Sulai-Ba, before its ending. The others had told her things: tormenting the elderly being with horror stories in the darkness. They told her about the pollution; the bands of oil through which they must move like a dancer between banners, the chemicals which stung the eyes and left an acidity at the back of the throat, the dangerous wash of the canal boats and junks, so many more than in her own time. Embar Dea was afraid of these things, and afraid, too, of the people themselves: the people who lived in the world beyond the Night Harbour, their sharpness, their long hands, their little heads and little eyes.
Now, after Ayo’s death, Embar Dea had been summoned to the new temple, to Tenebrae, although she did not know why. She had expected to remain here. To live out her days with the days of Sulai-Ba. But now she would
have to travel through the canal system until she reached Ghenret, and then take the underground channels to the mouth of the delta, going east into the inner seas to where Tenebrae lay. It was a human name, appropriately enough for the new temple, but, strangely, a Western one. The Kingdom of Shadows. But then, not all of her kind were from the east.
Embar Dea reached the first filter, reached out with a claw, and waited for its heavy lock to swing open. The current, released, bubbled around her and she went through into Second Filter Channel. One more to go, and then she was out into the side channel that led to the canal. Already the water had a different taste, and Embar Dea, used to purity, wrinkled her muzzle at its sourness. When she reached Third Filter she almost turned and swam back; better to die a quick and bloody death at the hands of a friend in cold clean Sulai-Ba than breathe this filthy stuff. But friends may be dead already: she did not know where Onay and Merren Ame were. Out at sea, or dead, rolling to rot in the stinking waters of the canal or pinned to the bottom of a trawler with an illegal harpoon through the lungs? She had not heard from them for such a long time, and so she continued to swim, coming out with a snort and a gasp into the reeking water of the side channel.
When she came to the round outlet that led into the main Jhenrai, it was not so bad. The canals were supposed to be flushed every few days by opening the big sluices that led off from Ghenret. She could taste a cleaner undertone of salt through the acids and detergent, and the water seemed to be flowing fairly quickly. It was dark at the bottom of the canal; Embar Dea, afraid, had no wish to be seen making her journey. Boats tethered at the surface swung and knocked in the flow, the black bulks of their hulls rose above her in the darkness. Someone threw something over the side, an unpleasant mixture of solids and acid which drifted down through the tainted water and which Embar Dea swerved to avoid. She was following the salt, coming up towards Ghenret. Her instructors had told her when the sluice was to be opened, and she would have to pass through or be penned in the muck for another three days. Thus Embar Dea hurried, an elderly water dragon, travelling quickly and unseen through the silted canal to the harbour.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Liz Williams is a science fiction and fantasy writer living in Glastonbury, England, where she is codirector of a witchcraft supply business. The author of seventeen novels and over one hundred short stories, she has been published by Bantam Spectra and Night Shade Books in the US, and by Tor Macmillan in the UK. She was a frequent contributor to Realms of Fantasy, and her writing appears regularly in Asimov’s and other magazines. She is the secretary of the Milford SF Writers’ Workshop and teaches creative writing and history of science fiction.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this book or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2006 by Liz Williams
Cover design by Barbara Brown
This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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