Tymon's Flight

by Mary Victoria

  The searing fire in his side abated. When Amu Bibi was satisfied with her handiwork she sat down beside him, pursed her lips and fixed him with a beady eye.

  ‘Argosi not welcome in Nuri shrine,’ she pronounced. ‘You be careful, not hasten next life.’

  Tymon glanced at the crone in surprise. ‘How do you know about the shrine, Amu?’

  ‘I know all.’ She tapped the side of her nose. ‘I speak to Sap.’

  He stared at her. She erupted into a dry cackle, rocking with mirth. ‘I have nephews in tent-town, yes?’ she grinned. ‘But you not careful! Stupid! Enemies everywhere!’

  ‘Amu,’ he pleaded earnestly, ‘please tell me. How can I find the shanti?’

  She watched him a while in silence, her colourless eyes appraising him from top to toe.

  ‘Shanti find you,’ she answered finally. ‘She have powerful friends. See Sap. Find you, if you wish.’

  ‘You really believe in the Grafting, don’t you?’ He could not keep a note of derision from his voice. ‘Does the shanti go in for all that prophecy and soothsaying nonsense as well?’

  The smile died on the crone’s cracked lips and she turned away from him towards the compound entrance. After a moment, the sound of running feet echoed through the gates and a perspiring soldier trotted into the courtyard. He cleared his throat, fixed his gaze somewhere above the heads of his listeners and unrolled an official leaf-scroll with aplomb.

  ‘By order of the Grand High Governor,’ he cried, ‘Marak city is placed under martial law, on this the ninth day of the Water month. Curfew will begin an hour after sunset and terminate an hour before dawn. No citizen shall go forth into the city after curfew. Furthermore, citizens of Argosian descent, and members of the erstwhile temple mission—’ here the soldier licked his lips with evident enjoyment ‘—are discouraged from leaving their homes unless absolutely necessary, as they are targets for rebel agitators. This state of emergency shall continue until the twelfth of the month. Thereafter a new proclamation will be made.’

  At the close of his speech the man rolled up his leaf, turned smartly about and strode away from the compound without another word.

  ‘No time left,’ exclaimed Amu Bibi, jumping up from the couch with surprising vigour. ‘Must leave now.’

  ‘Wait!’ cried Tymon after her. ‘Tell me more! I’m sorry I laughed, Amu!’

  But the old woman was already gone, her tattered shawl fluttering after her through the gates. The door to Verlain’s room creaked open and the priest’s heavy tread approached.

  ‘What was all that commotion about?’ The fat man’s voice was querulous.

  Tymon tried to escape the couch before he arrived, but succeeded only in raising himself to a sitting position. Verlain’s lard-like mass quivered in front of him.

  ‘By the bells, you’re hurt!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘It’s nothing, sir,’ mumbled the boy, mortified.

  ‘Far from it. This is terrible! I feel responsible—I sent you into the tent-town yesterday, may God forgive me.’ To his dismay, Verlain squeezed onto the divan beside him, wrapping a flabby arm about his shoulders. ‘You were caught in the riot, were you not?’

  ‘I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, Father,’ Tymon protested, ducking his head in vain to be free of the arm. ‘Amu Bibi’s already seen to it. It’s not so bad.’

  ‘Terrible, terrible,’ the priest murmured unctuously. ‘These Nurries are animals, aggressive by nature. And the local shanti incites them to violence, you know…’

  He shook his flaccid chins, his breath reeking in Tymon’s face. With a burst of energy born of desperation, the boy pulled himself free and sprang up from the couch. It was his employer’s sympathy he dreaded, rather than his displeasure. He had no desire to answer questions from the priest about his experience the previous day, and wished at all costs to avoid the subject of the handbills.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he gasped. ‘Don’t worry about me, Father. I really should be doing the water-run. The cistern’s almost dry. I left the buckets down in the market yesterday.’

  He limped out of the compound, deaf to Verlain’s protestations.

  The energy that had propelled him from the mission dissipated by the time he reached the first tier. The bazaar was unusually empty that morning and only a small number of stall-keepers served the people hurrying by. Soldiers stood in knots along the ramp, surveying the street with impenetrable calm. Copies of the Governor’s edict had been posted at regular intervals on the walls. Tymon found his buckets near the palisade where he had left them, but did not shoulder the yoke at once. He lingered a moment by the side of the ramp, torn with indecision. He had no real wish to fetch water, to brave the throng on the quays, and certainly no desire to return to the mission. The marketplace seemed steeped in the memory of violence and his ribs ached at the thought of revisiting the shrine in an attempt to locate Samiha. He sat down with a grunt of pain on one of the upturned buckets.

  It was then that he saw the signature. Daubed on the doorway above his buckets was the ubiquitous crooked trident, this time without an accompanying verse. He was certain it had not been there during the riot. He frowned at the enigmatic symbol, struck by its form. Almost mechanically, he reached into his tunic pocket and retrieved the key ring that Samiha had given him. The resemblance was obvious. The signature repeated the design of the prison keys, a circular haft above a three-pronged shank. The symbol was a stylised key, not a trident.

  Was it a coincidence? Tymon’s pulse quickened as he gazed at the key ring. He had not taken it out of his pocket since the day of the tempest aboard the Stargazer, initially for fear that someone would discover him in possession of stolen property. Later in Marak, other matters had distracted him and he had not studied the key ring closely. Now, as he held it up and scrutinised it in a shaft of morning sun, he could have sworn there were scratches on the inside surface, on the blackened part of the ring. He turned the bunched keys first this way, then that. At last he hit on the right angle of light. The resin on the ring was indeed scored with faint marks. New words had been added to the existing text.

  ‘If found, please return to 6 Key Street,’ he whispered, reading the amended inscription.

  Samiha had acknowledged him after all! She had wanted him to contact her, left him a message. The horror of the events of the previous day vanished completely and he hurried as quickly as he could to one of the few manned stalls in the market, forsaking his buckets once again.

  ‘I need to find Key Street,’ he burst out to the man in the stall, without preamble.

  The merchant, a dour-faced Nurian with a long nose like the speckled fruit on his stand, indicated the collection of wizened frogapples before him.

  ‘One talek for the lot,’ he declared. ‘It’s a bargain, Argosi.’

  Tymon hesitated, staggered at the astronomical price and the demand for Argosian currency. ‘I just want directions—’ he began.

  ‘One talek,’ snapped the man. ‘Do you want them or not?’

  His gaze flicked meaningfully towards group of militia soldiers ambling down the ramp. Tymon realised that his conversation was being monitored. Slowly, he withdrew Verlain’s money from his tunic pocket.

  ‘Give me the lot,’ he sighed, pushing the hardwood counter towards the man.

  ‘With pleasure,’ smirked the merchant. The money was whisked away and the pile of dismal fruit dumped into a box in its place.

  ‘You’ll find my cousin’s stall three streets up, on your right,’ remarked the vendor, as he dusted off the table. ‘He’ll have the beans and greens you want. Brought fresh today in spite of the curfew.’

  ‘Three streets up, on the right,’ repeated Tymon. ‘You’re sure?’

  The other pushed the box towards him. ‘That’s what I said,’ he yawned.

  The soldiers moved on towards the gates and the boy exhaled with relief.

  ‘Thank you,’ he murmured to the stall owner, and hurried away up the ramp, the box o
f shrivelled fruit under his arm.

  ‘No problem. Come again!’ sang out the merchant from behind him.

  Tymon had already passed the first narrow road intersecting the main ramp and reached the second before it occurred to him to doubt the trader’s word. His pace slowed as he reached the third turn-off to his right. It was more of an alley than a street. There was no sign at the entrance to the dusty by-way, no indication that this was the Key Street he had been told to find. He paused a moment at the mouth of the alley, examining its dingy recesses. Then he continued on, his footsteps echoing in the narrow space between the buildings. He had to take the chance. He had to see if the message on the ring would lead him anywhere. The passage was steep and winding, and spiralled down successive flights of steps. He squinted up at the faded numbers over the doorways; many were missing or illegible, but he established finally that they went in decreasing order. At length he arrived at the address written on the ring, an upper-storey apartment near the city palisade, accessible only by ladder. He stood in the courtyard below, eyeing the non-descript building and shabby balcony overhead.

  ‘I must be mad,’ he sighed. He stepped onto the ladder and began to climb, wincing as the movement chafed his ribs.

  ‘Then it is a good madness,’ replied a well-known voice from above. ‘Welcome to my home, Argosi.’

  The balcony, empty a moment before, was now occupied. Tymon glanced up with a thrill of joy to see Samiha at the railing. The shanti was no longer dressed in her ceremonial green robes but wore a simple white shift and breeches, her hair knotted in a long rope over one shoulder. She smiled at him as he climbed laboriously up the remaining rungs of the ladder.

  ‘I’m truly sorry about what happened in the temple last night,’ she said, helping him to install himself somewhat shakily beside her. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t let on that I knew you. The trouble in the market—the deaths of those poor people—it wasn’t the right time. I hope you’ll forgive me.’ She glanced at the box he still carried under his arm, pressed to his good side. ‘Ah. You brought…frogapples. How nice.’

  He thrust the box to one side of the balcony. ‘They’re not very fresh,’ he muttered. He could not put words to the sweet rush of excitement that took hold of him when he was in her company. ‘Don’t worry about the temple,’ he added hurriedly, opting for her designation of the shrine. ‘Did you know anyone caught in the riot?’

  ‘Not personally,’ she sighed. ‘I fear there will be consequences for what took place yesterday, Tymon. People are very angry.’

  ‘I’ll vouch for that,’ he replied with feeling. ‘I thought I’d never be able to talk to you again without having my bones broken. I didn’t see the message on the ring until this morning.’

  ‘So that’s what kept you so long.’ She laughed. ‘Granted, I was writing in the light of the storm-lanterns, with a splinter of wood, but still! A whole month…Well, they did say you needed to find us on your own, and that you’d do it today.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘The Focals.’ She beckoned to him. ‘Come inside and meet them. They should be ready soon. Meanwhile, we’ll see about some refreshment.’

  He followed her, wondering, through a little door leading off the balcony.

  ‘I had no other way of reaching you that night on the ship,’ she continued over her shoulder. ‘I wanted to tell you I was grateful for your help, among other things.’

  They entered a modest apartment under the eaves of the building. The front room was no more than twenty paces wide and unfurnished, like the shrine in the tent-town. Two doorways hung with bright curtains opened out of the far wall; the floors were piled with weave-mats. The cloth on the left-hand doorway was drawn aside, revealing a small and equally austere sleeping alcove. Tymon glimpsed five people, two women and three men, seated in the alcove, forming a circle. They appeared to be in some form of reverie or trance, for their eyes were shut. They sat silent and straight-backed.

  ‘Do not disturb the Focals,’ cautioned Samiha, in an undertone. ‘Wait here. I’ll be back shortly.’

  She slipped through the right-hand curtain. The boy settled himself down on the floor of the main room and scrutinised the five individuals in the alcove. They were dressed much like the shanti, in loose-fitting white robes. A white-haired old man and a tiny woman, frail and wrinkled, sat on one side of the circle. The young couple across from them might have been only a few years older than Tymon, though it was hard to be sure: Nurians quickly lost their youth to sun and hardship. The final member of the group, a man in his middle age, had his back to the curtained doorway. His weather-beaten face was obscured by a shock of dark hair.

  Tymon craned his neck to catch a glimpse of the fifth Focal’s features. He could have sworn he had seen the man before—somewhere in the first tier market, perhaps, or half-noticed in the tent quarter the previous evening. The word ‘Focal’ was also known to him, though he could not place it at once. It had to do with Grafting, he remembered suddenly. The people in the alcove were practising a Grafting trance. He had stumbled onto a group of Nurian heretics, probably the very same ‘Sap cult’ he had been warned about. He recalled Verlain’s stories of an apostate priestess leading young men astray in the city. Nothing, much to his personal regret, seemed further from the truth where Samiha was concerned.

  As he thought of her she reappeared and placed a small tray table with folding legs in front of him. It bore two drinking bowls and a hardwood pot.

  ‘I hope you like yosha,’ she said.

  Without waiting for an answer, she knelt down and poured steaming green liquid from the pot into one of the bowls, handing it to him. Tymon lifted the fragrant container to his lips. He had not yet tried the traditional Nurian drink—Verlain would have nothing at the mission that was not at least slightly intoxicating. The sweet infusion was delicious, rich and light. He gulped it down gratefully. He found the apartment hot and airless and the yosha refreshed him.

  ‘What’s a Focal?’ he asked Samiha, although he could guess her reply.

  She filled her own bowl with great care, as if the yosha were precious. Her face was concentrated over the steaming pot. ‘They are Grafters, Tymon. The five chief practitioners in the canopy, to be precise. Few mortals have their power.’

  ‘And they knew in advance that I’d be coming.’ He tried to keep his tone non-committal, to suspend judgment until he had heard more. It was difficult. He was used to rejecting claims of magic and sorcery outright.

  ‘Yes. They Saw it during their last trance,’ she said, stressing the word.

  Tymon smiled. ‘Do they have the Sight, then? Does the Tree speak to them, like the Saints in the old days?’

  ‘The Tree you’re thinking of, the World Tree, is just that—a giant plant, no more sentient than the frogapples you brought this morning.’ She peered at him over the lip of her bowl. ‘The Focals speak to the Sap. You know what that is, right?’

  ‘I’ve been trying to forget what I learned in Treeology class, but yes.’

  ‘If that’s all you learned, then we’re in trouble,’ she chuckled. ‘For Nurians, the Sap isn’t some mystic force outside you. It’s here,’ she tapped a finger on her jugular, ‘closer than your life’s vein. It runs through everything. We’re alive because of it.’

  She paused to gauge the effect of her words. He stifled his impatience. It appeared that Samiha did indeed believe in soothsaying nonsense of the sort spouted by Amu Bibi. He wished, in vain, that the conversation would take another turn.

  ‘Events and people are connected. They’re one thing, like the branches of the Tree,’ she resumed, watching him closely. ‘That’s why the Grafters can See the future—you are the future. You’re becoming it. Your priests in Argos have forgotten their own basic teachings. Or perhaps they simply lied to you. I don’t suppose they told you that you are part of the Tree of Being, the sacred body of the universe, and that the Sap moves through you—’

  ‘They aren’t my priests, Samiha,’ he inter
rupted with a sigh. ‘And you talk as if there’s some mighty conspiracy against Nurian wisdom. How are we Argosians to know what you believe, way out here in the Eastern Canopy?’

  She blinked at him in surprise. ‘Where do you suppose your own culture comes from? Don’t you remember that your people came from Nur, hundreds of years ago?’ Her voice had risen a little, and she glanced remorsefully in the direction of the Focals before continuing in a curt whisper. ‘What we believe is what you believed, to start with, anyway.’

  ‘Leave me out of it. I don’t believe in anything,’ he said. ‘I’m not interested in being part of some mystic Tree. The ordinary one is enough for me. I think all this is a waste of time.’

  ‘Poor Argosi.’ She spoke gently, even condescendingly, as if he, not her, were the oppressed member of a slave race. ‘The priests have robbed you of your birthright. There’s an awesome power at work in the world, a power in you, in the movement of leaves and the flight of birds. The Tree grows, the Sap flows. But you don’t See it. They’ve made you blind.’

  ‘Actually, it’s more like the reverse,’ he growled. ‘I’ve had this sort of craziness repeated to me my whole life. I’ve had the Saints and prophets and their precious Grafting drummed into my skull until I want to throw the pack of ‘em into the Storm. I don’t believe in it because it’s ridiculous, that’s why.’

  ‘Not even when the Council’s Grafters were working under your very nose? Oh yes,’ she retorted to his questioning stare, ‘Argosian soothsaying didn’t come to an end with Saint Loa or Saint Usala. But the Council doesn’t like us ordinary folks knowing of such things. They oversee all Grafting activity in Argos—or what they would like to call Grafting. Sorcery, more like. How else would they twist a man’s mind until he jumps into a Tree-rift? Think about it.’

  He did think about it, and drank his yosha in silence, at a loss as to how someone as intelligent as she was could fall for such foolishness. Now that he was in her company again, he recalled her exasperating habit of taking the higher moral tone. So righteous, always so righteous. His eyes strayed irritably to the group in the alcove as he tried to decide whether they, at least, would oblige him by being charlatans.