by G. Howell
His muzzle wrinkled a bit in a pattern I recognized as puzzlement. “It would be trouble?”
I leaned back on the upholstered seat, sliding slightly as the carriage rounded a corner. “I’m still trying to sort out my current Rris relationships,” I said. “More at this time... I don’t need that.”
“Mikah,” he hissed softly, “she was after some entertainment. Why do you think sex has anything to do with relationships?”
We’d been through that before as well. I couldn’t explain it. “A human thing.”
And he’d heard that. He knew I didn’t necessarily mean it was better. “It works?”
Outside, brick walls scrolled past the window. I caught a glimpse of a bronze plaque. “It can,” I said as we drew up to our destination. “It does help if it’s reciprocal.”
Then it was time to go to work.
------v------
Warehouses. More warehouses. We had a guided tour of a row of dockside warehouses. After the splendor of the Rei collection, I got to look at floor-to-ceiling stacks of boxes, bales and barrels. Somehow, it just wasn’t the same.
From there it was out to the outskirts of town to the unbelievable heat and noise of yet another foundry, then on to an ironworks located a ridiculous distance away. I retired that night with a headache echoing with the ringing of iron on iron and wondering how the Rris workers with their oversized ears handled it.
Next day was a exploration of Open Field’s renowned glassworking industry. That entailed tours of everything from the sluggish and unwieldy vessels bringing in the barrels of white quartz sand, potash, limestone and other kinds of flux, to the glasshouses themselves. Those workshops were hot, reeking places. Poor ventilation meant there was more than a trace of chemical tang in the air. If I could smell it, then what was it like for the Rris workers?
Fine white sand and flux were melted in crucibles. Rris chemists adjusted the ratios and combinations of silica and fluxes of various kinds to produce different types of glass. The molten liquid was actually spun into its final shape by hand. A Rris craftsman with a hollow tube would load a dollop of molten glass onto the end of the tube, then spin the tube and blow through it. The glass would stretch out, taking on a final form like a frozen soap bubble. For window panes – the small, distorted type that seemed most prevalent in moderately well-to-do homes and establishments – the globule would be spun fast, centrifugal force producing a disk which would then have to be trimmed to shape. The more expensive panes were made from molten glass formed in moulds. The problem with that technique was that the surface that resulted was rough and dirty and required a lot of hand grinding and polishing before a usable product was available.
Glassware produced for every requirement, from elegant delicacies to windows to chemical retorts. None of it was mass-produced. There were no production lines, just artisans turning out their products as needed. Skilled work, techniques that required years of training and practice to perfect. But so slow. It explained why glazed windows were for the rich.
Nevertheless, the quality of the work was better than anything I’d seen back in Shattered Water. A combination of skill, experience, and technical tricks along with the quality of the quartz sand produced exceptional results.
“It could be very useful,” I said as the carriage rattled out the Chartz glass works gates. An escort guard on llamaback watched as we passed and then fell in behind.
A low sun painted the rooftops and chimney stacks of Open Fields a warm orange while cool shadows crept through the streets. After the heat of the glassworks the cool of the evening was a welcome change, especially for my hairy companion. Opposite me, Chaeitch was panting noisily, ruffling his fingers through his chest fur to circulate some air. His ears flicked. “You think so?”
“You’re interested in electric lights?” he could understand the word electric, even if he couldn’t say it. “That’ll need glass, very clear and precision manufactured.”
Chaeitch’s head tipped to one side, then to the other. “That’s not possible in Shattered Water? We have glassblowers too.”
“I know,” I waved a shrug. “But the quality of the Chartz work and materials is extremely good.”
“A,” he acknowledged, albeit reluctantly.
“Why spend money on equipment and training to produce second rate material?” I asked. “Partnerships can be advantageous.”
“A,” he acknowledged again. He knew that, of course, it was just pride speaking. He twitched his ears. “You know something about glass making they don’t?”
I smiled. “You think they’d like to know how to make glass that’s more malleable? Or much stronger? How about plate glass? Big sheets of glass, perfectly flat and clear without polishing?”
He mused for a few theatrical seconds. “That could be... marketable.”
“I’m sure something could be worked out,” I grinned. It’s a habit that’s incredibly hard to break.
Outside, the receding light was just stroking the tops of chimneypots and motionless weathervanes. Higher overhead, a few tails of cloud burned gold against the dark sky. Rris were still going about their business. What they considered dim was near pitch blackness to me, so it’d still be some time before lights started to come on.
“A lot of Mediators around,” I remarked.
Chaeitch made an interested noise and leaned forward. “There as well?”
Through his window I could see another pair: a solemn looking couple Rris standing in a building archway. Their leather kilts and vests matched the outfits of the other. Their weapons were just as visible. “I suppose you are something of interest,” Chaeitch chittered.
Dim the light might have been, but I could certainly see where their gaze was going. “Then why do they seem more interested in each other?” I asked.
“Huhn?” he chirruped a curious interrogative and leaned forward to see, but the Mediators were behind us. “That many in one town’s not usual.”
“A convention?” I asked jokingly, but underneath I had a nagging uneasy feeling. “Is something going on?”
He blinked. His eyes were reflecting light from somewhere. In the gloom it was like a pair of small lights flashing. “Why’d you ask?”
“Just...” I hesitated, trying to put it into words, then shrugged it off. “I’m used to things getting unpleasant when they get unusual. I think I’m just twitchy.”
“Forgivable,” Chaeitch chittered and leaned back, glancing at the window. “I’ll make some inquiries. There might be a guild assembly.”
Oh, a union thing.
We rattled on through the darkening streets. Along avenues where trees spread their leaves against the evening sky, where flocks of birds trilled and fluttered in the branches as they settled in for the night. Here and there warm orange glows of lamps were springing to life in windows: patches of domesticity in the dark facades silhouetted against the skyline. Chaeitch and I were chatting, talking about the day and then off into tangents encompassing my family, his family, what was on TV when I left.
The carriage rattled to a halt. There were raised voices outside.
“What...” Chaeitch started to say and the right hand carriage door was pulled open from the outside. Three Rris were staring back up at us, one with his hand holding the door open. By their dress, all of them were Mediators. I peeked out through the ornate window grill on my side: there were more Mediators there. Armed. All heavily armed with firearms and blades.
“Out,” the Rris at the door said to Chaeitch.
Chaeitch looked at me, “Wait,” he said.
That bad feeling was back and stronger than ever. “Chaeitch…” I started to say.
“Just, wait,” he said and stooped out the door. The carriage rocked as he stepped down. The Mediators stepped aside, then two of them climbed in and sat down. One op
posite and one beside me. There were the usual nervous twitches, but both of them were big for Rris, and both of them armed. Their pistols were still in their bandoliers, but their hands were hovering near the grips. Chaeitch was exchanging low, urgent words with another Mediator outside.
“What’s going on?” I asked, feeling something tightening in my chest.
Chaeitch turned back to me. His ears were down. “Mikah, go with them.”
“What? What’s happening?”
He wasn’t meeting my eyes. I was having horrible flashbacks to another time in a dark alley when a friend had deserted me. “They want you to go with them. To the hall. They want to talk to you.”
“Does her ladyship...”
“Mikah,” he said. “They’re Mediators.” As if that explained everything. “Please, just behave?”
The other Mediator clambered in, sitting down in the opposite corner. I saw Chaeitch take a step and hesitate. He looked confused, distressed, annoyed and then the door was closed. A second later we jolted into motion.
The Mediators watched me. The last one in was leaning back, watching me through slitted eyes. He... I was pretty sure it was a he, appeared a lot more relaxed than the others. For a second I thought back to the insurance hidden back on the Ironheart and wished I’d had it with me. No, these were cops. I didn’t need that sort of trouble.
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
A pause, then that calm one said, “Your friend told you.”
“No, he told me what you told him. Did he mean the guild hall? Why? Why this way? Why not just ask? What’s going on?”
He tipped his head slightly and those eyes watched me. I knew that stare. I’d seen it before, somewhere. That cool appraisal. Those eyes that were a rare glacial-lake green.
“You don’t remember me?”
Did that mean I knew him? I blinked, then felt my jaw drop along with the penny. “Shyia?”
“It’s been a while hasn’t it, Mikah?”
------v------
Two years ago I’d stumbled into this world and the Rris village of Westwater. Shortly thereafter I’d been accused of murder. The parochial locals had found themselves in over their heads and sent away to a nearby town for assistance. The law has sent Shyia. A mediator. A cop. Well, that was what I’d assumed.
Assumptions can be dangerous.
He’d stayed. He’d deemed me innocent of the charges and of considerable value. From there I’d been escorted away from Westwater and out into the Rris world at large, to eventually arrive at Shattered Water. He’d stayed for a while, as was his duty, but I’d never even known when he’d left to head back to his home town.
So ‘friend’ might not be the best label. Applying the human concept of friendship to someone or something with a completely different thought and decision-making process is always risky - as what happened with Chaeitch reminded me. And Shyia had never been the open, friendly, caring and sharing type. He was a hardass, whatever the species. But he’d stood up for me and he’d been the only familiar company for the long trek from Westwater to Shattered Water, so I’d thought of him as a friend.
But why was he there?
“Your presence is demanded by his Lordship. He felt I was the best to bring you.”
“I mean, why are you in Open Fields? Long way from Lying Scales.”
His cool stare never flinched. “Apparently I’m considered an expert on you,” he said and I got the distinct impression that he wasn’t amused by that. “His Lordship summoned me.”
Second time he’d mentioned that. “His Lordship?”
“Ah Ithisari. Guildmaster.”
“Mediator Guild?” I asked, then answered my own question. “Of course.”
He hissed softly and glanced out the window. His associates hadn’t spoke. They kept an eye on me, but they also watched the passing surrounds.
Shyia propped his chin on his hand, still gazing out the window. “I’m just to bring you before his Lordship. Then it is up to you.”
I frowned. “Is this something I should be worried about?”
A snort. “I answered that back in Westwater.”
What the hell did he mean by that? That was years ago. I’d been learning a lot back then, but he had told me a few things that’d stuck with me. Not necessarily the most optimistic things. That worried me.
So the gunshots took me completely by surprise.
Light strobed through the dark street. The tight volley reverberated between the walls on either side, the deep booms of muzzle loaders blurring into a wall of sound that hit like solid blows. I grabbed for a handhold as the carriage lurched to the side and halted. Outside there were yowls and screeches and another volley of gunfire, much more ragged, which degenerated into individually distinct booms and cracks. Splinters flew as something punched its way through the wood of the ceiling. A fat slug of flattened lead rattled to the floor.
“On move, split!” Shyia snapped to the other two. “Distract. Move!”
In one move the two quiet ones had both doors open and blurred out into the darkness. I saw the indistinct form of one of them pause, raise a handgun and then my night vision was gone when the weapon discharged in a gout of sparks and light. I didn’t see the target or if it was hit because Shyia had grabbed my arm and yanked me toward the other door. I yelped and had to move, fast: his claws were out and digging in. “Move,” he snarled and I did, jumping out and almost stumbling on uneven cobbles that struck painfully against my moccasined feet
Anemic starlight filtered down into the narrow street from a rectangle of sky visible past dark rooftops, but otherwise it was pitch black. I could hear alien shouts and screams, the clash of metal weapons and the sounds of close combat. There were weapons discharges, filling the night with flame and spark-filled bursts of light and an acrid blue-grey smoke that spread and filled the narrow street with fog that reeked of rotten eggs. Figures milled around us but it was impossible for me to see who was who, which side was which.
The alien grip on my arm wasn’t that tight, but the claws hurt as he pulled, leading me at a dead run through the bedlam and into pitch blackness. It was an entryway, an arched tunnel into the atrium of a Rris residence. Shyia snarled something I didn’t catch and he turned, led me around a corner and I tripped on something - a step in the darkness - and yelled at the flash of pain as his claws tore.
“Come on!” he hissed and his grip closed again, feeling wet on my arm now as he helped me to my feet. We were on wooden flooring now, moving through spaces I more felt than saw. I stumbled against something else – furniture I think – and heard a rattle and door open and then Shyia yowled, “Look out!”
There was more movement all around. I heard claws on wooden floor and loud breathing and then snarls and vicious tearing sounds.
“Shyia!” I yelled.
“Mikah, Rot you. Run!”
He couldn’t be serious. I couldn’t see a thing. Whatever he said next was cut off with a grunt, then a yowl and there were more nasty sounds in the dark. Then I was too busy to care.
Something... someone grabbed at me. I swung, blind, and connected with furry flesh. There was a cough of air and something else caught at me from behind. I lashed out with elbows, kicked with feet and knees as clawed hands snatched at me. Sometimes I connected, once with a force that jolted up my arm and sent someone flying back, but more often not. A body landed on my back and an arm looped around my neck, cutting off my air. I staggered into something that felt like a table, pushed off to reel backwards until I hit a wall as hard as I could. The attacker on my back took the full force and I felt and smelled the breath knocked out past my ear and the arm around my neck loosened enough that I could gasp a breath of my own and jab an elbow backwards. My assailant fell away with a gagging noise.
There was a
nother to take his place. I was blind, I was outnumbered, but I was also terrified and desperate. I fought with everything I had: struggling and kicking and headbutting in the blackness. The only sounds were my blood and breath pounding in my ears and the coarse rasping of my assailants’ breathing. Hands trying to grab me slipped off skin made slick through sweat or blood. Fur rasped against my skin, choking me as they tried to pin me or hooked me in a stranglehold. A cloth wrapped around my face, pulling tight over my mouth and nose. I tried to claw at it and my assailants grabbed my arms, holding my down while the cloth tightened. It was wet and stung, burned against my skin. I involuntarily gasped a lungful of dizzying fumes and tried to shake my head free, but the cloth was wrapped tight around my head and it only took a few lungfuls of the fumes and it was over.
I remember I wasn’t out cold. Not completely unconscious. Rather it was as if the world were receding, like I was falling backwards slowly down an infinite tunnel. I think I tried to fight but I’ve no idea if I was even moving. But there was something going on that I was vaguely aware of: movement and dark and light and dark again...
My next coherent awareness was that movement was knocking my head against something hard. Opening my eyes made no difference, it was dark, but the nausea when I moved was unbearable. I puked my guts out until nothing else came and I just couldn’t move. There were voices, but they went away along with everything else. It didn’t matter. I couldn’t care.
------v------
There was light.
There was movement. Jolting, bumping and acutely uncomfortable movement, rattling my skull against hard wood.
Without opening my eyes I was aware of a light flashing across my face. Bright, even through my closed eyelids. Also of stuffy warmth; like the inside of an old canvass tent on a hot day. And there were noises: loudest were squeaking and rattling of metal and wood, then there were the distant sounds of wind in trees, the sounds and smells of animals.