Long Days in Paradise - The First Book of the Shards of Heaven

by Amos T. Fairchild

Chapter 12 – Saljid II

  There is to me no greater thing

  Than a clear white sky on a piece of string.

  I

  “What an odd woman,” Jorden thought aloud as they left her loft, though perhaps not as odd as the world she lived in. “Your local fortune-teller is she?” Taf frowned in response. “Psychic? Seer?” Jorden added.

  The aestri shook her head. “Just a friend. Suzy was once quite popular as a seer in the city, before she became blind, but now she seldom does such things. There is too much of the future that she doesn't like seeing.”

  “Blind, oh. I didn't notice.” Perhaps she wasn't quite as odd as he thought. Also perhaps more insightful than he first thought...

  They were soon out on the roof-tops yet again – more of the treacherous gaps to jump – but it was brief by comparison to the last journey, another loft soon entered. Jorden hoped it was the last for a while. It was certainly one of the nicer lofts, the inhabitants having constructed somewhat more substantial walls and floors than most, and it was also one of the more populous. That was because it was the home of more aestri than burgo, and aestri tended to leave the lofts at night to hunt. So did the burgo, apparently, but burgo also spent a large percentage of their day soaring on the city thermals as well. Aestri could not partake in that relaxing pastime, and tended to lay about the lofts and sleep through the day instead.

  The aestri in the loft were quite varied in appearance, as Jorden guessed they would be, and generally quite amiable. They did tend to be somewhat more light-footed than the heavier set Hambone, yet few were quite as thin as Taf, and their eyes and hair were most commonly a variation of the colour brown. They were all about Finesilver's height, they all had quite substantial claws, and they all had the teeth and slitted pupils that Taf shared. In all there were few surprises.

  The burgo were another matter. The hair of their head ranged from blacks and browns to a fluorescent yellow, and many wings showed bands of colour and pattern. They also tended to be more shy than the aestri. The aestri themselves were not shy at all. The young man was a friend of dear little Taf, and that was enough for most. He was also an outsider that was new to the world, and there was a rumour that he had once been silly enough to kiss a Precinct Kaedith. He was not a man that sounded dangerous, except in a very clumsy sort of way.

  Jorden smiled and greeted the aestri that Taf introduced as the three of them came within what appeared to be something of a common room or place of meeting. It was a very large room by loft standards, perhaps twenty paces by ten, the ceiling high enough for even Jorden to easily walk beneath. Most of the names of the aestri introduced were quite simple ones, unlike burgo names, yet Jorden knew he would not remember many. Even those he did remember would be difficult to recall a face for.

  He did try to remember the names of those that seemed the closest friends of Taf, like Raindrop and Dustmite, Greywhisker and Yellowtail. Yellowtail seemed an odd name to Jorden, or odder than most, for he was yet to see an aestri with a tail. There were certainly none within the loft. To the aestri, Yellowtail was quite a normal name and it was Midnight that approached the odd. A name such as Pandora was totally unacceptable to most normal aestri, and old Pandora had suffered a great deal of ridicule in her younger days. She was a great aestri and much loved in her later years nonetheless, but many were glad when the horrible name was gone. Midnight was only just considered a proper name, whereas Deadrat would have been quite acceptable. There were no aestri in the lofts of the area who were called Deadrat, however.

  But there was a Midnight, and although her name was slightly odd, as was another aestri before her called Daydream, the Aestri Midnight herself was well respected by those of the wharf.

  Jorden did not meet her for quite some time as Midnight was away from the loft until that evening it seemed, but he met many others and talked to several. It was generally considered amongst the loft aestri that he was an acceptable entity, for a man, and that there would be no problem with him remaining in the loft. A vote was taken and only Hambone was not in his favour, and that was done in fun. The final decision remained Midnight's, however.

  Jorden liked the aestri, and the two red-headed burgo who crawled in through the skylight late in the day. By that time many of the aestri had gone off hunting, although there would soon be few things to hunt amongst the warehouses with such an increase in the wharf population that was brought on by the Time of Darkness. In another week they would be forced to the river and the boundaries of the city shield. There was always plenty of food there.

  As Jorden gazed around the group of new-found friends he noticed that some were dressed better than Taf, and some far worse. It seemed to depend mostly on their supply of rags and stolen cloth. Raindrop appeared to prefer nice new stolen cloth, and had fashioned herself quite a reasonable dress out of it. She was thin like Taf, but she was silver haired with greenish-brown eyes.

  She spoke as well as any. “There is always the underwharf,” she said as the seven aestri, two burgo and one common man sat on boxes and lumps of wood and pieces of rag and the floor of the common room. “All sorts of things go down to eat the fish waste.”

  They were discussing the night's hunt, Jorden again feeling somewhat inadequate amongst such hunters of the night. “We all know what things go down to eat the fish waste,” Yellowtail returned, “but what about the morelian. The underwharf is their haunt, and they need to eat as well.”

  “Only a handful of morelian have come to the city this darkness, Yel,” said another of the aestri, an older aestri that Jorden did not know. “The underwharf is crawling with rats and lungfish. I was talking to Morelian Scuz a few days ago and he said that the rats would soon be eating Morelian.”

  “The underwharf, then,” said another. “Taf and Bony will be there to help.”

  “But all that mud,” Yellowtail whined. “I hate mud.” They continued to argue the matter, the Burgo Hascitta claiming the southern fields were much nicer places to hunt, wild midget goats often coming in from the surrounding darkness to the safety and slightly better grazing of the city buffers.

  It then became suddenly much quieter when Midnight arrived.

  Midnight was very unlike any of the aestri Jorden had come to know so far, but she looked her name. With her black wrap of coarse woven cloth, and her hair of jet, and eyes that were so deep a shade of brown that brown seemed a silly name for them, she was indeed a part of the night. She also seemed older than most, although not as old as some of the poor ancient creatures that Jorden had noticed amongst the lofts. He would have guessed perhaps fifty years if she was a woman.

  That was Jorden's estimate, but Midnight was not a woman and she was actually now passed her seventieth cycle. She looked first to Finesilver. “Esodo-Kaeso,” she said quietly. “We feared you were lost. It is good to see you safe in harbour.” Taf simply nodded in return.

  Midnight then came closer and scanned the young common man thoroughly. “So you are the outsider of Beyond.” It was not particularly the sweetest of aestri voices, Midnight rarely having the need to act in such a way, but it was not a voice that hinted at any resentment either. In all it was reasonably neutral. “And you wish to stay amongst the lofts, I hear?”

  Jorden stood and offered a hand in greeting, but like most aestri, and unlike Taf, Midnight rarely used the human gesture of touching limbs. “Taf wanted me to come, but if it's any trouble I'll...”

  “It is unlike Finesilver to bring home a pet,” Midnight said without bothering to wait for Jorden to finish. Her comment received a few coughs of laughter. “I fear I will need to find the consensus of the loft before I make any decision.”

  “There was a vote earlier in his favour,” put in the one of the oldest of the aestri present. “Most of us were here then.”

  Midnight sucked air through her jagged teeth in thought. “Is there room for him here? I thought that all of your chambers were in use.”

  “He can share mine,” Taf s
aid. “He has been sharing my hide aboard the Katerina without giving any trouble, and I have plenty of room.”

  Midnight stared toward the younger aestri for some time before speaking. “Then I'm sure he will be no trouble.” She smiled toward Jorden, although it was not the warmest of smiles. “You are welcome in the lofts, outsider, as are all those who are outcasts of common society, but you are not old and frail and so must contribute to our well-being.”

  Jorden nodded, though he hoped that did not mean he would find himself as rat fodder in knee deep mud. “I hope to get a job in Saljid,” he put forth without conviction.

  The aestri simply nodded. “I am sure we will miss your company when you do.”

  II

  Then Jorden was alone.

  Taf was off hunting with her friends, as were the burgo, and Midnight seemed to reside elsewhere. That didn't particularly bother Jorden Miles. Unlike nearly everyone he had met since the house of the kaedith, Jorden found Midnight strangely disturbing. She had the eyes of Tsarin, wells of knowledge and power untapped. The man shrugged the thought.

  Now he sat in the small bedroom of Aestri Finesilver with himself for company. It was a barren bedroom at present, Taf yet to bring her bedclothes and logbooks from the Katerina. He spent a half hour dusting a room that had not been used in months, then gingerly went though some of the boxes of the aestri's trinkets. The most interesting item was another sea-dragon tooth. Hanging from a rafter above was a frail paper thing that he was certain had to be a kite. It was a brightly coloured double-diamond with a bundle of ribbons dangled below, a length twine attached and wrapped on a small white bone. It had to be a kite.

  There wasn't much else in the room, but at least it was a room. Jorden wasn't sure what the walls were made of – something between the strength of sailcloth and timber – yet at least they were there, as was an imitation door. There were a few shelves hanging from the rafters on beaded strings, a bed that was not unlike the one on the Katerina, and a hole in the floor that looked down into the dim warehouse beneath. There was also a hole in the roof that let in the light of the flare-sun, and the rain, no doubt, although there was a makeshift shutter that would keep out most.

  Jorden decided to return to the loft's combination common room and dining room, which is exactly what it was, a big homely room in which to do everything else that was important to life but sleep. Except for excrement, of course, which was done elsewhere. Unfortunately no-one had told Jorden where elsewhere was, and he was busting. He eventually went outside and urinated into the warehouse gutter, which was likely what an aestri would have done, the fluid trickling down amongst the storm-water drains for the morelians to eventually worry over. Not that they did. They were used to the smell of the sewers. Jorden still needed to know where the aestri went to empty their bowels, but for the moment he was happy.

  That was until Taf and her friends returned in the late evening with their haul. The aestri of the loft had no reason to conceal the identity of the meat they consumed. Everyone knew what aestri and burgo ate, and that was essentially any sort of fish or animal. Anything that was fresh, at least, and Jorden knew that now. He had shared the meals himself. The knowledge made the sight no easier to bear, the loft aestri seldom bothering to go to the trouble of slicing the rats into tiny pieces, their teeth were quite efficient for the job.

  The filthy rats were at least skinned, as were the lungfish, which was a creature that did not look anything like a fish and certainly nothing like a lungfish of the real world. It did however resemble a lung, and Jorden did try some of it. It was eaten quite raw, without the benefit of a lot of garnishing other than salt, and it was not particularly appetizing. Jorden ate very little, yet felt better when he found he was not the only one.

  Taf did not think the lungfish was as sweet as other fish either, and she thought that the underwharf rats were fit for no aestri to eat. A lot of the aestri present did eat a few regardless, crunching bone and sinew to get the most from the pathetically thin rats. Rats which had been brought in by the numerous other aestri of the loft who had hunted elsewhere were huge by comparison, although all Domain rats were relatively large.

  The few remains were thrown onto a rag at the centre of the room as the growing horde of aestri finished the carcasses, Taf and friends in general agreement that the underwharves and their rats could be left for the morelian, or the morelian for the underwharf rats. They considered other places suitable to hunt, the arrival of Kaeina and two other burgo making the decision considerably easier.

  The burgo brought with them three midget goats, although if such goats were midgets then Jorden doubted that he wished to see the full sized variety. These would have stood waist high at the shoulders if they were still alive. They weren't alive at the moment, of course. They were quite dead and soon without hides, the aestri then feasting yet again. By the coming of midnight – the position of the moon and not the aestri of that name – the room resembled the sight of a bloody massacre, the corpses piled in the centre of the room. Kaeina later dumped the bones and bowels into the waters of the bay along with all the other city waste.

  Jorden doubted he would stay amongst the aestri for long. He had a feeling he just didn't have the stomach for it. At least the aestri had eaten enough for a day or two apparently, so he could relax for now. He might get hungry, but at least he would not have to watch the carnage as the aestri tore midget goats to shreds in much the same way as would a pack of wild dogs. Although the aestri did not fight amongst themselves while feeding.

  Jorden soon became very relaxed, as did the aestri, but unlike the outsider they did not fall asleep. There was much to talk about, and Taf had yet to collect her belongings from the Katerina, Hambone helping her do so after the meal had settled. Jorden slept though such things: the reading of her latest tales, the stories she told of the kind, but slightly odd man of Beyond, and the dawn of the following day.

  By that time the aestri were also asleep, and Jorden woke. He was alone in the common room with an aching back from sleeping on a lump of rag. He groaned and wandered to the room of Taf, crawled onto the rat-fur beside her and went back to sleep.

  III

  Taf woke as midday neared and rolled from the bed. She gently roused the man she found with her. “You were lovely company last night,” she smiled.

  Jorden grunted and wiped his eyes, then glanced to the glare that streamed in through the hole above. “Unfortunately I'm not nocturnal. Do you always stay up all night?”

  The aestri shrugged. “Until the early hours before dawn, then sleep until lunchtime. We see the day and the night that way. Then when we go to the city buffers, we hunt during the day and sleep some of the night.”

  Jorden nodded as he rose to sit. It would be good if they would be soon forced to roam the fields that surrounded the city, fields that were sandwiched between the line of city shield and the boundary of the Darkness. They would perhaps lose their nocturnal habits and would be returning with somewhat better meat. Yet Jorden did not wish to have them to support him any more than Midnight. He needed money and some sort of job and he needed to see a kaedith about a green crystal... “I might go in an have a look around this Saljid,” he thought aloud. “I don't suppose you know where this Kaedith Ellin lives.” He was not particularly fond of the idea of confronting another kaedith, yet he had little choice if he ever wished to get home. Taf had promised that the freelance kaedith of the city were of no threat to him, and were certainly not loyal to the more powerful, and somewhat more wealthy kaedith of the Council.

  “I can find out. Suzy will know.” Taf had hoped he would forget about his home for at least a little while longer, yet it could hardly be easy to forget his own land; his family and friends. “But there is no hurry, is there? You will not be able to leave Saljid until the next Time of Light.”

  “No, but I'd rather hear the bad news now than later. I don't want to sweat over it for the next six months just to be told that they can't s
end me back.”

  Taf nodded in agreement, hoping that the news would not be too promising. Though she cared enough to want Jorden to be happy, and that meant leaving the Domain, she cared too much to wish to lose him. Perhaps she could be sent with him...

  IV

  The kaedith shook her head. “No child of the Domain can live in that world as one of them. I won't go into the details of it now, but you can trust me on it. Even an outsider who has lived here for too long can find the return extremely difficult.”

  Taf sighed and sat back into the leather clad chair of the Kaedith Ellin. It had only been a very faint hope that she might be able to travel to Jorden's world.

  The outsider continued to pace the kaedith's tiny smoke filled office. His decision to stay or leave would not be an easy one, and he doubted Taf would understand. She would be better off without him anyway, he was sure. “I'll pay whatever it costs to get myself home. I can raise the money, it'll just take a while.”

  The ancient kaedith continued to puff on her cigar. “You can't buy your way out, little man.”

  Jorden frowned. “Give me a price and I'll see.”

  The kaedith shook her head. She was very unlike the Kaedith Tsarin. Tsarin had been the proud Precinct Kaedith of the system, Ellin was just an old and very badly dressed witch who made her way in life by selling potions and powders and bits of crystal... And lying a lot. She was not lying now, that was usually done in predictions of the future that saw the immanent and unavoidable death of the customer. It was also bad for business to tell too much at one sitting.

  She scratched amongst her tangled locks. “You can give me all the money you want, but you won't get any nearer to your home. Of course I would not take your money, because I can't transport people through the transition to your world, and I'm not altogether good at the planer transitions either. Not my field.” She stopped scratching and relaxed back into her own chair, lifting her feet to rest them on the desk. “Young Kaedith Mariland will take your money though.”

  Jorden was becoming agitated by then, annoyed that the kaedith all seemed to be slow to answer the simplest of questions and were all extremely evasive. “Then I'll see her, maybe.” He thought to leave. “Sorry to waste your valuable time.” He made no attempt to make the apology sound genuine.

  The kaedith laughed heartily. “I'm sure,” she said when she could manage. “Please give Mariland my regards.” Ellin waited until Jorden was ready to open the door to leave, Taf standing to follow him. “Of course Mariland has no more hope of returning you home than I have.” The kaedith burst into laughter yet again.

  Jorden cursed softly. He wondered what he had done in life to deserve such punishment. “You said...”

  “I said Mariland would take your money, and she would.” Ellin stopped laughing, removed her feet from the desk, and sat forward in her chair. She even extinguished her cigar. “Come and sit down, please,” she said in a voice that was friendlier, and much more serious than any she had used previously. “Mariland would make a lot of promises that she couldn't keep, and make a lot of money, and she would avoid the truth of the matter.”

  Taf hissed a breath and returned to her seat. Jorden remained on his feet.

  “Your aestri here is a friend of old Suzy, so you can trust me to give you the facts. That's more than you'll get from any back-street kaedith in the whole of Saljid.” Ellin shook her head. “The truth of it is that leaving the Domain isn't easy. You might be here for quite a while before the old slug decides to look into your pitiful story, but it won't cost you a single sector. It might cost you a lot of time and effort though.”

  “You kaedith can never come to the point, can you?” Although Jorden thought that he could see her point. It was as he had originally planned. All he would have to do was follow the lines of transition until he found an opening. There were only two problems: Tsarin had mentioned something about the ports being set for specific purposes, and what the hell was this slug that Ellin was talking about.

  Taf had given up on the conversation and was looking at the cluttered shelving. There were crystals and vials and books and dragon teeth...

  “At least I know what the point is,” Ellin smiled. “Which is more than you. And the point is that there is only one entity in the Domain who can help you, and she works for free.”

  Jorden stood, waiting. Ellin played with him and said nothing for several moments. “This would be more funny if you didn't already know,” she said. “You've heard it all before. You don't need me to tell you. Your mind is like a crystal fish bowl. I can see right through it, and I can see that very little swims about in it! And I can see that you've been told about Hura. Yet still you come and waste my time.”

  “I just want to get home,” Jorden said in a huff.

  Ellin nodded. “Then you will need to make a plea to the divine Hura Ghiana. The best I can offer is a teleportation spell that would send you back to Thagul, and that would cost more than you could earn in a whole cycle and would probably kill both of us – although hopefully just you – and you would not be able to make the transition even when you got there.”

  “So I just waltz up to your witch-god and ask to go home,” Jorden said with little regard as to whether the statement was offensive or not.

  The kaedith nodded again. “That's about the size of it,” she said, and lit up another cigar.

  Jorden frowned, yet there was a touch of a smile upon the lips of the aestri. “I don't suppose you can tell me where to find her.”

  Ellin smiled. “Sure. Nowhere. Well, thereabouts.”

  Jorden grumbled to himself and left the dark smoky office of the Kaedith Ellin, his feeble intelligence abused enough for one day. He was now sure that he did not like kaedith, although that did not stop him from visiting another.

  The Kaedith Mariland was far more pleasant, well dressed, and did not smoke a cigar. She made quite a lot of promises and asked the equivalent of three months wages for part payment of her services. Jorden was no longer in the mood for such things by then and told her to go to hell. Mariland simply looked at the odd young man and shook her head, saying that she had lived in Hell as a child and much preferred Saljid, although she did travel there every few cycles to visit her ageing mother.

  Jorden eventually decided to find some real food to eat and then to perhaps spend the rest of the afternoon trying to get drunk perhaps.

  V

  Saljid was a lot like Tucaar, only bigger, and the little food stalls looked much the same. Indeed one seemed to have the same grimy stove and grubby bearded cook as he remembered.

  Jorden paused to buy one of the oily brown things that the stall sold and had a brief discussion with the cook on the worth of the local currency. He hoped he could trust the man, and offered a little extra for the information. Fortunately for the outsider, the cook in question was feeling in an unusually pleasant mood that afternoon, and he gave the poor idiot a reasonably accurate description of the use of money: how it was minted, what you did with it, what it was worth and how you earned it. He took the cost of ten pork rolls as payment and gave the silly little boy one of those pork rolls.

  Jorden went on his way with about a month's wages – more than he thought Orani would have given him – chewing a greasy piece of rolled pork.

  Taf had been quiet, and kept a respectable distance as they walked the street. She could see that Jorden was upset and wondered how she could comfort him. “I'm sorry that you can't return home yet, Jorden, but I'm glad that you will be with me at least until the next light.”

  Jorden walked along the street in search of a tavern or saloon, or whatever they were called in Saljid. Maybe a drink would help. His mother would never let him drink at home, but she was a long way away these days. “Probably longer,” he mumbled. “But like you say, I am glad in some ways. I'm not sure I want to leave you behind either. I would like to get home to sort a few things out and tell everyone that I'm okay. Then I actually think I would come bac
k to this madhouse. It isn't really that much worse than home, and... well, there's you. And I feel so much healthier here...”

  “That would be nice,” Taf smiled. “I wouldn't be sorry to see you leave if I knew you were going to return.”

  A pause. “I'd love to see my mother's face,” he smiled. “She doesn't really like me having anything to do with girls. She wouldn't be real happy I was hanging around you. But she must be worried about where I am...”

  “Then you will try and return?”

  “I might,” Jorden said, “but I'm not sure what to try next.” He saw a saloon and headed for it, noticing that Taf had vanished as he climbed the stair. He looked for her and saw the aestri walking in the opposite direction on the street below. “I need something to drink,” he shouted to her. She nodded, smiled, and continued to wander on the street. “Coming?”

  Taf frowned. “I can't go in there, silly. I'll wait for you out here.”

  Jorden grunted. He should have known. “Just be a moment,” He said, but he was actually a little less than that.

  VI

  Jorden didn't see the man at the bar that had taken an instant dislike to the aestri lover who had wanted to bring one of the horrible little things in with him.

  Pets were fine, in the right place, and near the common man Halford when he was drunk was not the right place. It wasn't that he really hated aestri, although he was not particularly fond of them, but he did hate idiot baby face youths who thought they owned the city. And when he was drunk there were always a lot of idiots around. They seemed to swarm to him as soon as he began to enjoy himself. Some idiot would come up to him and ask a pathetic question like Do you want another drink? or How are you feeling today?

  They weren't too smart for long, Halford quick to flatten the face of that sort of idiot. But some were really amazing, like a man that would bring an aestri into the very saloon where he was just getting comfortable, the twelfth pint of bullwhip beer still wet on his lips.

  Another face to flatten.

  Halford smiled to himself afterwards, and had another beer before collapsing to the floor of the tavern as he did on many darktime afternoons.

  For Jorden it had been something of a surprise. One moment he was walking into the dim, but rather pleasant smelling tavern, and the next he was lying on his back, staring toward the blank grey sky of Saljid. And his face hurt. A wipe with the back of his hand produced a thick smear of blood, and his nose was numb and throbbing at the same time. He had a reasonable idea what had happened, he just didn't know why or when. He moaned and tried to move. It didn't feel that good when he did, but then he didn't like the way the people of the street were walking over and around him as if he wasn't there, and he wasn't sure when a wagon was likely to come rattling down the street. It felt like one had already run over him.

  As he sat up he saw Taf sitting in the shade of a grain store nearby. He crawled over to her and collapsed again. “Thanks for dragging me out of the way of the traffic,” he moaned. “Sorry to put you to such trouble.”

  Taf grunted. “If you wish to go into a place like that and get into a fight, then that is your problem. Don't expect my help.”

  “Fight!” Jorden glanced to the aestri, wondering if she were serious. “I barely got through the door, then wop – nothing. It wasn't much of a fight. Are the local bars always like that?”

  The aestri shrugged. “I don't know, I don't go near them very often. I have seen men fall out of them before – almost every time I am near. They lay for a while then go back in and fight some more, or drink perhaps. I think that men like to fight.” Her eyes were fixed upon those of the outsider. “Too much of such drink is never good, and the men get mean and silly like the crew of the Katerina. You don't want to be become like that, Jorden, it is best to stay away from such places.”

  He could understand her attitude. “Okay, sure. Maybe you know something better to drink.”

  Taf smiled. “Of course.”