Celephaïs, the royal city of King Kuranes, features in the periphery of many of my stories, but as so many important people and things are found there it obviously deserves a book of its own. These stories help explain how some things work in the Dreamlands, flesh out the city and a few nearby places, and further extend the story arc developed in the Book of Jake.

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Districts, walls, and major ways

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City elevation

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Rivermarket areas

Chapter 1

The alarm bells clanged her awake.

Fire!

Sergeant Jabari leapt to her feet, her hands pulling on her leather jacket and boots automatically.

She rushed out of the barracks, joining a dozen other women awakened by the alarm in the pre-dawn gloom.

Rasha called down from the tower: “It’s over near the Boreas Bath! It looks like just one building still!”

Good. If it was near the bath they’d have plenty of water.

“Rasha, hold the fort!” She turned to the others. “Double-time! Let’s go!”

They ran, each woman carrying buckets or poles.

The streets were largely deserted at this time of the morning, although as they passed the merchant area they could see a few early risers already preparing for the day’s work.

The public bath was just a short distance from there, and as they approached they could see flames shooting from a small, two-story building across the street from it.

“Larima, Georgina, douse the buildings on both sides and make sure it doesn’t spread,” she shouted. “Beth! Roust everyone and get them started with the buckets.”

Georgina, with a long orange braid hanging down her back, sprang into action. She got the bucket brigade up and running, her women rapidly joined by commandeered residents and shopkeepers gawking nearby, and the small pump they had brought shortly began to spray water on the flaming structure. With the fountain so near there was plenty of water available.

So far only the first floor was burning, but the building was made of wood, and the second story was already smoking dangerously. It was only a matter of time before it burst into flame, too.

Jabari tried to look inside to see if there was anyone still alive, but the fire was too intense.

If there was anyone in there, she thought, they’re dead by now. They’ll just have to wait a little longer.

The firefighters concentrated on dousing the adjacent buildings to prevent the fire from spreading—it had already jumped to one building, but fortunately was still small enough to be extinguished quickly.

The second floor suddenly exploded into fire, a puff of flame shooting out of the windows and shattering the few panes that remained. Glass shards rained down, but the heat was so intense the firefighters were safely distant. The fire shot up again with new energy, but that was its last gasp as the water sprays finally began to work. One wall of the building collapsed onto the wreckage, and with a cloud of glowing sparks, the fire was under control.

Embers and tiny flames remained, popping up here and there through the smoke and steam, but now it was just a matter of drenching the mess. By the time the sun rose the fire was dead, and adjacent buildings, though sooty and thoroughly soaked, were largely untouched.

Sipping a cup of cold tea provided by a local shopkeeper, Jabari sat on an upturned bucket, staring at the steaming ruin.

“Everyone says it was a saddlery, shop on the bottom and living upstairs,” said Larima. “No family, apparently—they say she lived alone.”

“It’s not so cold she’d need a fire this early in the morning,” said Jabari. “Brewing tea, perhaps?”

Larima shrugged.

“We’ll be able to look around in a bit. I don’t think there are any embers left now.”

Jabari wound a piece of cloth over her face and rose.

“Let’s go have a look now, shall we?”

Larima followed her into the wreckage.

Most of the second floor and roof had collapsed in the fire, and what wasn’t charred wood was covered with steaming ash. Puddles dotted the floor.

The woman’s body lay in the middle of what must have been the saddlery workshop.

She was dead, of course, and terribly burned, but the axe wedged in her skull made it very clear that it hadn’t been the fire that killed her.

What was even more interesting was the half-charred corpse of a man next to her.

* * *

“OK, so the woman’s body is Mistress de la Corda, just as everyone thought, but that doesn’t help us much,” said Jabari. “We still don’t know who the man was, or how he got into Skala Ereskou.”

“Or why he would want to kill de la Corda,” added Larima.

“Nothing’s turned up in the ashes yet?”

“Not yet. They’re clearing away the debris now.”

“I have to notify the captain, of course. A resident is dead, and somebody else. Almost surely an intruder,” mused Jabari. “He will not be happy with me.”

Larima grinned.

“This is one of the few times I’m happy you’re in charge, not me!”

“Bitch,” grinned Jabari right back. “In any case, though, ask around and find out more about her. And any men in her life.”

Larima nodded.

“Sarge, we’ve got another problem,” came a voice from outside the Watch guardhouse.

It was Georgina. She’d rolled her long orange braid into a bun and pinned it to her head to get it out of the way. Her hands and tunic were dirty with soot.

“We got most of the wreckage cleared and didn’t find anything unusual. It looks like she and the man killed each other and the fire was started by accident; hard to tell for sure. Hard to tell much of anything, actually, but that’s our best guess based on the weapons and wounds. Doesn’t seem to have been any third weapon involved, at least.”

She paused and pulled a small leather pouch from her vest.

“We did find this, though, in the woman’s sash...”

She opened the pouch, and poured the contents out on the flat of her hand.

They looked almost like pearls, iridescent and almost glowing, but with a reddish glint no pearl could match.

“The Honey of the Goddess....” sighed Jabari. “Well, shit.”

She held out her hand.

Georgina rolled the “pearls” back into the bag and handed it over.

“Eight of them, Sarge. Offhand, that’s probably a year’s worth of all our salaries put together.”

“If you can sell them without getting caught, that is.”

Georgina nodded. “If you can sell them without getting caught.”

“So how many people know what’s in this pouch, Georgina?”

“Just the three of us, Sarge.”

“And there were really eight, right?”

“Hey, c’mon... we’ve been through it all together for over ten years. Yeah, Sarge, eight. Really.”

“Larima, how much is in that fund for the three of us now?”

“Not enough yet, Sarge. It’s a good start, but not enough to buy us out, or buy homesteads.”

“So how do the two of you feel about these honeydrops?” asked Jabari, carefully removing three of the “pearls” from the bag, and handing them over to Larima. “You agree we have to report these five honeydrops to the captain?”

“Yes, sir! It’s our duty, sergeant!” said Georgina, standing up straight as if on parade.

“Absolutely, sergeant!” agreed Larima, dropping the honeydrops into an inner pocket in her tunic.

“Guard Georgina, I comment your honesty in reporting this contraband, and hereby authorize a prize money payout of three gold coins.”

“Thank you, sergeant.”

“And I’m off to report this to the captain immediately. Larima, you’re in charge.”

“Sure thing, Sarge!”

Larima waved a casual salute and walked over to lounge in Jabari’s chair. She stretched her feet out.

“My regards to the captain!”

It being a beautiful morning Jabari decided to walk through the Cirque of the Moon, cutting straight through Celephaïs. She used the Aglaea Gate, nodding to the constables there, who were (luckily for them) alert and on duty when she passed.

It was still quite early, and the Cirque was still largely deserted. People were visiting the Estates, as they did every morning whether in respect or prayer, and there was the usual gathering of people around the Hippocrene Spring and the Necklace getting water for the day.

Clean water was available throughout the city, of course: the Slarr River, fed by the mountain springs of Mt. Aran, but many preferred the fresh spring to the flat taste of aqueduct water.

Given a choice she’d prefer fresh spring water, too, but as a Guard she rarely had a choice.

She walked closer to one of the Necklace ponds and scooped up a mouthful.

Cold and delicious, but no time to dawdle.

She continued on around the curving Cirque to the Street of Pillars, which she then followed toward the wharves, and the sea.

The main Guard barracks and the captain were located down near the cargo docks, surrounded by warehouses, cargo of all sorts being dragged or wheeled about, laborers shouting and cursing, and the smell of fish, fish, fish. Most of the fish were unloaded on the other side of the Street of Pillars, where the fish market was, but you could never escape the smell.

Jabari once again thanked her gods she was in Skala Eresou... she couldn’t imagine having to live and work in this odor every day. The captain said he was so used to it he never even noticed it anymore, but she found that difficult to believe, much as she trusted the captain.

And since the captain chose to actually live elsewhere—up in High City, in fact—she figured he wasn’t as used to it as he claimed.

“Captain Ragnarsson? Sergeant Jabari, sir, from Skala Eresou.”

The captain was seated in his office, staring at a map of the farmland north of the city.

“Come in, Jabari,” he said, motioning her in. “Apparently there’s a leak in one of the High City cisterns, and the artificers say they’ll need to hook up an alternate from the Slarr Aqueduct for a few weeks so they can fix it. Be a bit of a pain in the neck to run that pipe without damaging the Wall or blocking the outer Boreas Gate.”

He pushed the map to the side and looked up at her.

“And what’s your problem, Sergeant?”

“Murder, and an unknown man in Skala Eresou,” she said, pulling up a bench to sit across from him. She pulled the cloth bag out, and handed it over.

“And this.”

The captain gave her a quizzical look, and opened the bag, rolling a honeydrop out onto his palm.

“Oh, my. More honey. And in Skala Eresou this time!”

“This time?” asked Jabari. “Where else?”

“High City, of course, where the money is. A number of nobles have begun to show signs, and there have been a few, um, incidents.”

“And Skala Eresou abuts High City, through the Wall of Euphrosyne,” mused Jabari. “That’s the lowest side of High City, but still...”

“When did you check that wall last?”

“Twice a year, sir. The last one was about two months ago.”

“Nothing unusual?”

“Not really... a few smaller buildings built up against the wall, but nothing more than one story. The regs only forbid structures on the outside of the walls, not the inside, but I didn’t see anything especially unusual on that side, either. Just the usual gardens and sheds of the smaller estates.”

“Tunnels?”

“We checked both sides thoroughly and couldn’t find anything. The Wall goes down to the rock there, so digging a tunnel would be quite an undertaking to handle in secrecy.”

“Maybe it’s time for a surprise inspection.”

“Yessir, I’ll get on it immediately.”

“Report back to me at once if any new information surfaces. Who’s the man?”

“No idea yet, Captain. I’m looking into it.”

“Damn. Well, keep me informed if you discover anything related to this. Anything at all.”

“Yessir,” she said, rising.

“Oh, Jabari, how many honeydrops were there again?”

“Five, sir. It’s in the report.”

“Oh, so it is. Yes, thank you. Dismissed.”

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General outline of Skala Eresou

Chapter 2

“Stop, thief!”

The shopkeeper scuttled around his fruit cart, switch in hand, and shouted after the boy. “Thief!”

Wearing only a ragged dhoti of indeterminate gray, the tow-headed boy stopped walking a few meters down the street, apparently ignoring the angry shopkeeper and instead concentrating on the ripe apple he was so eagerly devouring.

The shopkeeper’s sandals slapped down the paving stones.

“Pay for that apple, boy!” he shouted, reaching out for the boy’s arm with one hand.

“I dropped a coin in the basket, didn’t you see it?” said the boy, smiling as he stepped back to leave the shopkeeper grasping thin air.

The shopkeeper paused confusion.

“You did?”

“Of course I did! Would I be standing here talking to you if I were a thief?”

The shopkeeper thought on that, wiping his brow with a multi-colored towel.

He lowered the switch, tucked the towel away again in his voluminous sleeve, and tightened his sash, which had slipped down over his paunch. While the towel was undyed, his kaftan was covered with a tight geometric pattern in maroon on tan cloth. His kaffiyeh was checkered red, held by a black agal which was in serious danger of slipping off entirely.

“That apple costs a copper!”

“And a copper I paid you, old man. Check for yourself!”

The boy motioned at the street stall.

Seeing the boy waiting there—although still eating the apple—and making no move to flee, the shopkeeper hesitated, then turned and stalked back to his stall. He picked up the little bowl and looked inside.

“There’s no copper in here you little bastard!” he cried, and as he turned to pursue the boy, an apple core hit him in the head.

“Thief!”

The boy vaulted over a nearby cart, turning a somersault in the air, and landed in a roll, which evolved into another leap, this time onto a barrel, and onto the roof of a small shop. He paused, looked back at the furious merchant, and walked to the back of the shop, dropping to the ground and escape.

At a fruit stand nearby an older, elegantly dressed woman nodded to herself, eyes still fixed on that empty rooftop.

* * *

Sergeant Ng and the two constables walked through the market slowly. They were on patrol, but it was a quiet day and they had no place they needed to be. Most of the people there, whether they were merchants, shoppers, or just loitering, ignored them or nodded in greeting; they were more interested in the ones that hurriedly looked away or sidled into the shadows.

They knew every corner of this market, whether it was the vegetable farmers hawking tomatoes and greens fresh from the fields outside the city walls, enormous baskets of grain, or fresh-baked bread and cakes. Local spices were on display in cloth sacks, mouths gaping to reveal seeds and powders in a rainbow of colors and scents. Spices collected here from all the corners of the Dreamlands came to Celephaïs mostly by sea, arriving at the busy docks on the other side of the city, but they all ended up here, joining local herbs and spices that came from the surrounding mountains and forests via the river, or overland. They were quite some ways from the wood market, with its enormous variety of structural or beautiful lumber, transported by river boat, but even so there were a few merchants who had set up shop here, trying to sell cut lumber or exotic woods after being unable to purchase the space they had hoped for in the wood market.

The farm market was the farthest from the docks, and most of the carts brought their goods into the city via the Avenue of the Boreas or the Tanarian Way. Both gates were guarded, of course, but the city was largely at peace and there was little need to inspect anything.

Inside the market, though, it was crowded with buyers and sellers, carts of all types being drawn by a variety of beasts—some dangerous—, street stalls popping up here and there like mushrooms after a rain and blocking the streets, and of course pickpockets. It was a madhouse.

In theory anyone wanting to set up shop here had to get a permit from the Wardmaster, and anyone selling without a permit was to be fined or imprisoned, but the Guard had enough to do already and pretty much turned a blind eye when they could. As a result, very few of the farmers selling out of their carts had permits, and if they blocked a street (or the storefront of a permit-holding shopkeeper), the Guard could offer excellent motivation for them to move—or else.

The merchants sprayed water over the streets regularly to keep the dust down, but of course that just meant the carts turned everything into a fine layer of slippery mud until the next spray washed it all off again. The odors of spoiling fruit and vegetables, manure from the horses and deinos, and sweaty people combined into a stench that took getting used to.

Not surprisingly, the public fountains here were joined by a selection of alehouses, and the Guards went out of their way to be sure the alehouses stayed safe, whether from unruly patrons, theft, or fire. The alehouses reciprocated with drinks to help wash the dust out of their mouths in a generally you-scratch-my-back-and-I’ll-scratch-yours relationship.

There was always turnover as the harvests changed with the seasons and people came and went, but all in all it was pretty stable. As long as they kept crime down to a reasonable level, preventing fires from turning into disasters, and looked the other way when the Wardmaster raised the rent, everything was fine.

There was a fine line between accepting a bribe, which was a sure way to get into serious trouble with the captain, and accepting a drink from an alehouse or a bit of meat or fruit from a merchant. Some of the Guard had a habit of asking for more than usual, others gladly accepted whatever was offered.

As long as it was voluntary and stayed friendly, the sergeant and the captain both turned a blind eye.

Suddenly a paunchy, balding merchant erupted from the crowd and grasped Ng’s arm.

“Guardsman! A thief! A thief!”

Ng dislodged the man’s sweaty hand.

The merchant was dressed in a tan kaftan with red geometric patterning. Ng sized him up as a mid-level merchant, moderately successful, no doubt with a family shop and perhaps even a hired hand or two.

“Sergeant Ng of the Guard. And you are?”

“Thabouti Hamdi of Celephaïs,” replied the other, out of breath. “That boy! He stole an apple from me, and threw it at me!”

“What boy?”

“That boy, over the...” The merchant turned to point, but his hand slowed, drooped. “He’s gone now.”

“A boy? What sort of boy?” asked one of his Guards, a woman named Istas. She had a shortsword on her hip and a bow on her back, unlike the third Guard, a thin, tall black man armed with a cutlass.

“A boy! Like every other boy!” shouted the merchant, wiping his brow again with the towel. “Filthy, and wearing an equally filthy dhoti.”

“There are lots of boys like that,” said Jay, the black man. “I can see half a dozen right now.”

The merchant mopped his brow again, turning this way and that.

“There! That one! He’s stealing a cake!”

They turned and saw the boy, cake in hand, walking nonchalantly away.

“Halt in the name of the Guard!” shouted Ng, breaking into a sprint.

Istas followed closely behind, while Jay sprinted off to the side, hoping to cut the boy off.

The boy walked behind a cart of vegetables, and ducked down out of sight... and when Sergeant got there, there was no sign.

The baker walked up and stood waiting while Ng and Istas scanned the plaza.

He was gone.

“That’s Roach,” said the baker. “He showed up a few weeks ago, and isn’t afraid of man or beast. We call him Roach because he can slip into the smallest hole and escape.”

“Where did he come from?”

The baker shrugged. “Who knows? Boys like him come and go. It’s just the cost of doing business,” he said, walking back to his stall, “but it won’t go well for him if I catch him!”

Sergeant Ng nodded to himself.

“So, a barefoot boy, maybe eight or ten years old, straw-colored hair, bare feet... I’ll be looking for you...”

Chapter 3

Later that day, Sergeant Jabari notified the Wardmaster—Mistress Mary, better known as Mary the Boneless because she was paralyzed from the waist down—that they were performing an unannounced and immediate wall inspection.

She acquiesced, of course, since there was really very little she could do about it other than complain to the King, who was quite disinterested and would probably side with the Guard in any case... not to mention, the inspection would be long done with by the time she got an audience!

Jabari left two Guards at each gate and split the rest of her women into two groups, one working from the Boreas Gate up and then across the Wall of Euphrosyne, the other starting from the di Scalotta Gate to the Wall, until they met somewhere in the middle.

The Wall wasn’t that long, they’d be done soon enough.

She positioned herself up on the Wall itself, in roughly the middle. The walk on top of the Wall was once designed for defense, before the city had grown beyond it, and a third wall had been built even farther out from the Pinnacle. With crenelations and arrow slits it still looked forbidding, but was generally considered more of a hindrance than a defense measure by the populace. There were only gates through the walls, so it could take a considerable amount of time to move on about inside the city.

There were always constables at both ends of the wall where it bordered Skala Eresou, of course, to stop people from entering that way, even though the entire Wall was supposed to be off-limits to everyone but Guards. From the top she could see both groups of Guards at they worked their way along the setback, an empty space running along next to the Wall on the inside to facilitate rapid movement by defenders. Over the years the law had become looser and looser, and now even buildings of one story built up against the wall were pretty much ignored, as long as the roadway stayed wide enough for men and carts to pass easily.

Enforcement was looser, but the law still gave the Guard the right to demand entry to every structure abutting the wall. In most cases the owner allowed them immediate access, coming running quickly when called to prevent the Guard from smashing the lock. Or the door.

In a few cases the owner couldn’t be contacted and they’d have some repairs to do later.

Larima pounded on the door of the shack, demanding entry.

“Wake up some of the people around here, and find out who owns this place,” she ordered, and the constables with her spread out and began questioning local residents. Those who could left promptly, discovering urgent business elsewhere, and the laggards confessed that they had no idea who owned it.

It had gone up a few months ago but nobody remembered ever seeing anyone go in or out. Or so they said.

The Guard was rarely appreciated, except for theft or fire.

After half an hour or so, with no owner and no information, they broke down the door to discover an empty room with rough boards laid down for a floor.

Larima trusted her instincts and looked underneath... sure enough, there was a tunnel opening hidden under it.

She stepped outside, looked up at the wall walk to catch Jabari’s eye, and motioned.

It only took Jabari a few minutes to climb down the closest ladder and walk over. After one look she dispatched a runner to notify Captain Ragnarsson.

A ladder descended into the pitch-black hole.

“There must be a torch around here somewhere...” Jabari muttered, searching. Ah, there it was, hanging from the ladder.

“Larima, you’re with me,” she ordered, lighting the torch with her flint. “Ihala, make sure everyone finishes checking the rest! And if the Captain shows up, send him down here.”

The torch sputtered a few times then settled down to a steady, almost smokeless flame. No odor, either, she noted. Expensive.

The ladder was longer than she expected, ending about three meters down, with another shaft extending off to the side. One side of the tunnel was the stone of the Wall itself: the horizontal tunnel ran along the wall, not through it as she’d expected.

“I think it’s headed toward the sewage tunnel,” said Larima.

“Oh, shit.”

“Yeah, Sarge. And lots of it.”

They had to hunch over to traverse the shaft, and as Larima had thought it ended up at the sewage tunnel. The shaft opened up in the wall overlooking the flow. The river water was rapid here, picking up speed as it descended the slope toward the sea, but the place stank anyway, of course.

Jabari tied a cloth over her nose and mouth; Larima followed suit.

The stonework of the tunnel was ancient. Celephaïs had stood here for centuries, and while there were tales of its founders and their work, nobody really knew much about its origins, or its tunnels. Some thought they had originally been built as canals—most were certainly wide and deep enough for a small boat, and indeed the artificers often used boats to navigate it for inspections and repairs.

There were rumors of unmapped tunnels branching off into the darkness, and some extending downward where no boat could travel, deep into the earth or out to sea. The artificers had maps, of course, but everyone knew they were incomplete, only covering the portions they actually used.

The blackish, scummy water was about a palm’s width below the walkway at tunnel’s edge. The walkway itself was only barely wide enough to stand, let alone walk on, and was covered with mold and fungi.

Jabari held the torch closer... there were scuffmarks here, in front of the tunnel, but the walkway was untouched a meter or two farther, in both directions.

They must have used a boat, and that meant they couldn’t tell if it came from upstream or down.

She held the torch high and the two of them examined the walls and ceiling. While they couldn’t tell what might be hidden in the darkness, there was nothing visible—no markings, no doors, no signs that anyone had been here for centuries.

“Nothing more we can do here,” she said. “And I’m not getting in that water!”

Larima nodded.

“Let’s go get some air.”

They retraced their footsteps, and Jabari replaced the torch in the holder as they climbed out of the hole.

“I wonder if we can make it look like nobody was here...” she mused. “Larima, what do you think?”

“Uh...” the woman thought for a moment, looking around. “We can straighten up inside easy enough, but we kicked in the door...”

“Yeah, but we kicked in a lot of doors along the Wall, and checked all the structures. Suppose we just put the floorboards back, and make it look like we never noticed the tunnel?” suggested Jabari. “Go get me some dirt, Larima.”

She squatted down and began brushing out their footprints with her hands.

Larima brought in a few handfuls of street dirt, and they scattered it around artistically, camouflaging the few signs of their visit.

“That should do it, Sarge,” said Larima, flicking one last clod onto the floorboards.

“Yup, looks good. Now we need to settle in across the street somewhere to keep an eye on this place...”

They stepped back outside, and Jabari slapped a huge ILLEGAL STRUCTURE sign on the building. Signed by the captain of the Watch, it said the structure would be destroyed and the owner fined if it wasn’t removed within a week.

Nobody ever paid any attention to those signs, but it was a good way to explain why they kicked the door in while reassuring whoever used it that they really didn’t care that much.

As they were just finishing up a runner came from the Aglaea Gate. Captain Ragnarsson wanted to come in and requested permission. Even though he was their superior, as a man he couldn’t enter Skala Erasou without the permission of the Council, and since the Council had authorized her in their place, that meant Sergeant Jabari.

“No, I’ll go meet him there,” she said, denying the request. “Larima, finish the inspection, slap a few more notices on some of the more obvious structures, and then pull everybody out. Keep our little discovery as quiet as possible, but bring Ihala up the speed.

“I’m off to fill in the captain.”

“Yessir.”

“And keep an eye out for a good place to wait tonight, too.”

Jabari strode off to meet the captain.

He was not in a good mood.

“Dammit, Jabari, you call me here for a tunnel and then keep me waiting?”

“Sorry, sir. Things are a little more complex than we thought...”

She waved with her hand at a small teashop almost next to the gate, built against the Wall, looking out into the rolling parkland of the innermost Cirque.

“Let me fill you in quietly, sir. This way.”

She took an outside table, pulling it some distance away from the other tables there. The shopkeeper was not impressed, but knew better than to get angry with her, let alone with Captain of the Guard.

A pot of spice tea appeared on their table in seconds, and the shopkeeper retreated to safety as soon as he could. She smiled her thanks, but she could tell he wasn’t taken in—her reputation was pretty well established around here.

She filled the captain in, and explained they’d be watching from now on to see who was using the building, if anyone. They still didn’t know if it had anything to do with the murder, but it might explain how the man had gotten into Skala Eresou.

And the honeydrops.

The captain ignored his tea completely.

“You’re coming with me,” he said, after her tale was completed. “We’re off to talk the Chief Artificer.”

“The Chief Artificer?”

“First time?”

“No, but I’m just a sergeant...”

“Yes, but you’re my sergeant,” replied the captain. “Oh, that reminds me... there were some minor errors in your report. I made a few corrections to it, and would appreciate it if you’d rewrite and resubmit. Nothing major.”

He handed over her report with some scribbled edits marked.

“Of course, sir. I’ll have it to you first thing in the morning.”

One of the “corrections” was that the pouch had contained three honeydrops, she noted. Well, we’re all only human, she told herself. Even the captain.

Chapter 4

Roach had established quite a reputation. He’d stolen food from almost everyone, brazenly, sauntering off as if he’d paid and only running at the last minute. Small and agile, he seemed to know every nook and cranny of the market, escaping angry merchants—and Guards—with ease.

He was also a phenomenal shot with small stones—or apple cores—as many merchants and constables had discovered to their regret. While he hadn’t killed anyone yet, he had put out a merchant’s eye with a stone thrown from dozens of meters distant, and had demonstrated an unerring ability to hit people in the center of the forehead hard enough to leave blood and a bump.

Sergeant Ng let his men chase the boy, not expecting any success, while he watched the market from one of the city’s many minarets.

Most of the minarets rose in the Cirque of the Jade Bull, the middle ring. There were more on the higher ground on the north side of the city, but there were other minarets scattered here and there throughout Celephaïs.

One was conveniently located near the middle of the marketplace.

The boy never looked up, not even once, and Ng mapped his hiding places one by one: a culvert; a low rooftop protected by the overhanging eaves of a higher, neighboring building; under the (broken and immobile) cart of a well-known shopkeeper; even, in the early morning, in the stable of one of the inns. He was smart, changing his sleeping place every night, and always checking carefully to be sure one was safe before entering.

His men tried again and again to corner him, and he made fools of the bunch, leaping over them, diving between their legs, dodging and twisting to avoid nets, always with a smile. It may have been a game to him but his Guards were getting angry, and he knew it was only a matter of time before they began using their swords or bows on the boy.

The merchants were talking now of raising a complaint to the Captain of the Guard. If the Captain got involved because he couldn’t catch a little boy stealing vegetables, he’d probably end up escorting manure shipments somewhere.

Still, if they hadn’t caught the little bastard yet, obviously they needed a new approach, and that’s what he was working on.

After a few days he was confident he knew enough. After stealing a few skewers of meat from one vendor and a loaf of fresh-baked bread from a second, the boy had taken shelter in one of the many entrances to the waterworks running under the city. Most of the entrances to the tunnels carrying the river water used for the scattered fountains and public baths were covered by large flagstones, probably too heavy for that boy to lift, but there was one that had been cracked by age or accident, and was now covered by a simple wood cover.

The tunnel underneath ran in only two directions, upstream and down, and while the boy could certainly traverse it with ease, it was a simple matter to put Guards into the tunnels at the next entrances, in both directions. Ng organized the men into two teams, with instructions to block the tunnel in both spots and prepare to capture the boy. They readied nets just in case he could swim as well as he could run and jump.

Little Roach would be trapped.

A few minutes later Sergeant Ng crouched in the shadow of a warehouse, watching the entrance to the boy’s lair from a distance. He waited a few minutes to be sure the rest of the Guards were in position, then ran to the cover as noisily as possible, shouting “You two, get down inside! We’ve got him trapped now!”

He yanked the cover off, and peered inside.

It was empty, of course, but there was a half-eaten loaf of bread lying there, a few old rags, odds and ends. He used the tip of his boot to see if there was anything else hidden in the rags, but that was all.

Ng listened, and sure enough, he could hear the boy scuttling up the low tunnel, scraping along in his hurry. A grown man would have trouble moving in the tunnel with the water this high, but the boy was making good progress, judging by the sound.

Suddenly he heard shouting, and a yell of pain, and a splash.

More thrashing, muffled voices, then a clear call down the tunnel, voice distorted by the flowing water.

“We’ve got the little bastard, Sarge.”

He pulled himself out of the hole and walked up the street toward the next access, and met the Guards midway. Istas had her hands firmly on the boy’s upper arms, one arm in each hand. She was frog-marching him, steadfastly ignoring his continuing struggles and, at times, lifting him off the ground if his feet refused to move in the right direction. She was dripping wet up to her midriff, and her sandals made a squelching noise as she walked.

The other Guards walked with her, and some distance behind came tall Jay, walking in obvious pain.

“What happened?”

“Nothing important, Sarge... he just knocked me into the water, and kicked Jay where it hurts,” she said, smiling.

“Maybe not important to you but it is to me, Istas,” snarled Jay. “I’ll kill that little sonova bitch.”

Ng chuckled. “Glad to see all that practice in grappling came in handy, Jay. Maybe you can stop by Joy Street tonight and make sure everything still works okay.”

“I’ll have his fucking head on a pike, that’s what I’ll do tonight!”

“Now, now, Jay, he’s just a young boy,” grinned Istas. “Man up!”

She dragged the boy up in front of Ng, who was standing, hands on hips, in the middle of the street. Passers-by and carts automatically swerved around them in hopes of avoiding any interaction... the Guard could be awkward at times.

“What’s your name, boy?”

“Roach.”

“Yeah, that’s what they call you, but what’s your name?”

“Don’t have a name,” said the boy, smiling. “Me mom died before she gave me one.”

“How old are you now? Ten?”

“Uncle Sarl said I’s eight.”

“Where’s Uncle Sarl now?”

“Dead. Died the spring.”

“And you’ve been on your own since?”

“Yes. Leave me be.”

Ng laughed. “No, I don’t think we can do that, Roach. You see, you’ve been stealing from the merchants, and they’re quite upset with you.”

“They said if I’s starving to take it!”

“Did they now?” said Ng. “That seems somewhat different from what they told us.”

He leaned down, bringing his face close to the boy’s.

“You know what we do to thieves in this city, boy?” he growled.

The boy head-butted him in the face, and leapt forward, running up Ng’s body and flipping backwards toward Istas, twisting his arms out of her grasp.

He bounced to the ground and took off running...

...or tried to.

Jay was right there waiting, and grabbed him by the neck with one hand.

“Gotcha now, you little bastard!”

The boy struggled, but Jay’s huge hands held him tight, one around his neck and one on his right leg. The more he struggled, the more they tightened, and as Roach began to run out of breath he fell still.

Sergeant Ng picked himself up off the paving stones, face bloody from nosebleed. As least it didn’t seem to be broken.

“Jay, I think you and me are going to have to have a little talk with this roach.”

Jay smiled.

“Oh, yessir, I’ve a few things to say to him myself.”

Ng took some rope from his belt, and tied the boy’s hand together.

“Hold him still,” he ordered Jay, then knelt to hobble his feet. “That should do it.”

He stood, wiped his bloody nose on his arm.

“Now then, maybe let’s take our young guest back to the guardhouse, shall we?”

“Sergeant!”

A woman’s voice came from behind him.

He turned to see an older woman, slim and well-dressed, flanked by two younger women.

“I am Poietria Martine, of Skala Eresou. And you are...?”

“Sergeant Ng, Poietria.”

He was suddenly polite... he had no idea who she was, but any Guard who insulted a Poietria could kiss his chances at promotion goodbye. They had too many connections to the nobility, and the nobility had too many connections to everything.

“What is the boy being held for, Sergeant?”

“He’s a thief, Poietria, among other things.”

“From what I heard right now he is also an orphan.”

“Yes, Poietria, he seems to be.”

“And he is very agile.”

“Yes. And violent.”

“I find it strange that a group of armed Guards had such difficulty restraining a boy so young, Sergeant. Don’t you?”

He gritted his teeth.

“Yes, Poietria. We, uh, were not expecting such a small boy to be quite so violent.”

“Perhaps chasing and threatening him caused him to be violent?”

“Yes, Poietria. Perhaps it did, but he is a thief nonetheless.”

“Boy!” she called to Roach. “If I stand for you, will you stop this nonsense and come with me? I will give you food and shelter.”

The boy cocked his head.

“You are a woman... what would you want with my body?”

Poietria Martine stopped in surprise.

“Your... body...?”

“That’s what you oldies always want, isn’t it?”

She stepped closer and knelt in front of him.

“No, Roach, that is not what I want. I promise no one shall hurt you that way again. There are no men in Skala Eresou.”

“That’s what Uncle Sarl said. Didn’t trust him, either.”

She took one of the boy’s hands in her own. “Maia, come here.”

The older of the two women accompanying her, maybe in her late twenties or so, stepped forward and took Roach’s hand. The other woman, or perhaps a girl in her second twelfth, just stood there watching.

Poietria Martine turned back to the sergeant.

“Sergeant, perhaps I could give the Guards a small donation? To pay for your injuries.”

Sergeant Ng scratched his earlobe for a minute.

“You stand for this thief, Poietria?”

“I do.”

“The boy won’t come back to this market anymore?”

“He will not steal here anymore,” she confirmed. “Right, boy?”

He beamed, looking up to her like a guardian angel. “Yes, Poietria!”

A small, heavy bag was exchanged for the boy.

“Cut off those silly ropes, if you please,” she directed. “You can’t eat a proper meal with your hands tied, now can you, boy?”

Ng gestured, and Jay used his dagger to cut the ropes loose.

He waved the dagger under the boy’s nose.

“If we see you around here again, boy...”

Poietria Martine walked away, the two women and her new companion in tow.

“Thank you, Poietria!” called Sergeant, hefting the bag in his hand.

As he left, the boy looked back and signed an insult with his other hand.

Jay took a step forward, hand on cutlass, face red with anger, but Istas moved to block him.

“Leave it, Jay,” she advised. “It’s not worth it for a boy.”

“Jay,” said Sergeant Ng, “I think we could all do with a drink to ward off the afternoon heat, yeah? On me!”

Everyone agreed that sounded like a wonderful idea.

There was an alehouse right up the street.

---

Martine's Studio, with artist's conception of similar Roman home

Chapter 5

Sergeant Jabari walked out into the Cirque of the Moon with the Captain.

Most of it was parkland, with tended gardens, grassy slopes, walkways separate from larger streets for carts. It was scattered with key city buildings—theater, armory, a variety of key storehouses, and of course the Ten Noble Estates. Each of the nine Muses had her own Estate, a stone temple built with stone of exotic colors and textures, fascinating the eye and the mind. They were all different, of course... the earthy agates of Thalia, the black onyx of Melpomene, the soaring crystals of Polyhymnia... they were all beautiful, each in its own way.

Drax was the tenth Noble Estate, though not a Muse... and fittingly, his building was not a temple, but a library, imposing and elegant in the classical Greek tradition.

In the center of the Cirque reared the Pinnacle, a blackish-brown talon of bedrock thrusting upwards toward the stars. With sheer cliffs on most sides, a single switch-backed road ran from its base—at the terminus of the Street of Pillars, running straight to the sea—to the Palace of the Seventy Delights at the apex. Walls and buildings of pink marble were scattered across its surface like cherry petals in the spring breeze.

The Chief Artificer was at a smaller, unassuming building relatively close to the seadocks.

The captain walked in unannounced, scattering lowly clerks and draughtsmen in his wake, directly to the Chief Artificer’s room at the rear.

The door was open; he walked right in.

A large glass window let the sunlight shine into the room, illuminating the shelving covering one entire wall. The shelves were packed with stacks of paper and scrolls, information and drawings of every part of the city and its mechanisms. They were catalogued and maintained, replaced when found to be falling apart, or damaged by mold or water. Rumor had it a duplicate set had been created and was hidden on the Pinnacle.

In spite of the constant care and the catalog, however, the shelves still looked like a rat’s nest.

The Chief Artificer was bent over a table full of detailed plans of the city, deep in conversation with two other men.

“You two, out,” ordered Captain Ragnarsson, hooking his thumb at the door and shutting it behind them after they scurried out. “Artificer Marcus, forgive me. The matter is urgent.”

The artificer, who had stood silent while the other men left, stylus in hand, nodded.

“I gathered so, from your rather abrupt entry,” he said drily. “The cistern?”

“Not directly, but perhaps... Sergeant Jabari here has a short tale to tell.”

He turned to her, and gestured impatiently.

She went through the inspection of the Wall, and the discovery of the tunnel, skipping the fire, murder, and honeydrops entirely.

“How close was the water level to the walkway?” asked Marcus.

“About a palm’s width,” she replied.

“It has to be a swimmer,” he stated, nodding. He walked to the shelving and, without searching or hesitation, pulled out a map.

He rolled it open on the table, plunking weights on the corners to hold it spread wide. It showed the underground waterways for High City and Skala Eresou area.

“These are arched tunnels, which means the ceilings are curved upwards to better support the weight, but during the course of construction the artificers also built in horizontal blocks of stone in many places, specifically here and here,” he explained. “Most of them come down to the height of the walkway. Some have narrow through-holes to allow us to pass, but not these. If by boat, they would have to get into the water and pull the boat underwater, under those stones, before they could proceed. Several times.

“So it really has to be a swimmer, either from some other entrance or up from the sea itself.”

“I’ll need maps of what other access points are possible,” said the captain, picking up the map and beginning to roll it up.

The Chief Artificer grabbed it out of his hands.

“Take your hands off that plan, young man! This does not leave this room, ever!”

He was furious, and even the captain took a step back in shock.

“I will have a copy made for you, showing where the closest access is. Still, if the swimmer is a strong one and knows their way around the tunnels, they could enter anywhere in the city—or even from the ocean—and get there.”

“They couldn’t get in from the Slarr Aqueduct?”

“Impossible. It is fitted with a variety of nets to keep out debris, and is inspected daily. Out of the question.”

“I see...” The captain thought for a moment. “Do you think this could have anything to do with the cistern?”

“With the cistern...?” Marcus scratched his head. “The cistern is well upstream from there, but they are on the same line...I suppose it’s not impossible, but it would take a mighty strong swimmer to swim back upstream to the cistern from there! That’s pretty close to the aqueduct intake, and is a major feeder for a large section of the city. A lot of water goes through there pretty fast.”

“No human swimmer,” mused Ragnarsson. “What about a gnorri?”

“A gnorri?” The Chief Artificer was taken aback for a minute. “There aren’t any gnorri cities near here that I’m aware of, but I suppose a gnorri could swim it easily enough. Or up from the sea. It’d have to be able to stand the sewage, though... there’s not too much coming down from High City there, but the lines run straight through the city to the sea, and they get worse as you go.

“You don’t want to ever go near the downstream end if you can possibly avoid it...”

“You speak from experience, it seems.”

“Oh, yes, I know them well... every young artificer starts at the bottom, and that is the very bottom,” he laughed. “The stench is as bad now as it was when I was cleaning them.”

Captain Ragnarsson nodded, and dutifully smiled.

“When can I expect those maps?”

“The plans will be in your hands tomorrow morning, Captain,” corrected Marcus. “Your office near the sea cargo docks?”

“Yes, thank you.”

After we left the captain asked me quietly, “Why didn’t you mention the murder or the Honey?”

“Didn’t seem relevant,” I said, “and I figured if you thought differently you’d bring it up.”

“Good decision,” he grunted. “Hmm... no way I can join you tonight to keep watch?”

“If you order me I’ll allow it, sir, but I’d really prefer not to... Mary the Boneless is hard enough to get along with now, and she’s already upset with me about the surprise wall inspection.”

“Mary the Boneless... stupid bitch.” He kicked a pebble. “Alright, but I’ll be waiting at the Boreas Gate, and I want a runner immediately if anything happens.”

“Yessir.”

* * *

It was only a short walk from there down to the seadocks, and Captain Ragnarsson decided to pay an old “friend” a visit.

The warehouses were packed quite closely here, usually separated by narrow paths that were usually blocked by carts and people. He knew his way around, though, having spent the better part of a decade on the docks.

And he knew enough to visit this particular alehouse during the day.

If you looked closely enough you could still make out the name on the wall—Rancy Seahorse—and might guess it was an alehouse from the raucous laughter and the stench of thagweed seeping out of the half-open door, but it was clearly not the sort of place a tourist would drop by. Not that there were any tourists here in the dark heart of the docks.

He stepped inside and waited for a second to give his eyes a chance to adjust to the darkness.

There was some light seeping in through the filthy windows up above, and oil lamps scattered about on the tables, making it just possible to see that every face in the room was turned toward him.

Three men near the door stood and began to walk toward him, hands on their weapons.

The largest of the three growled, “The Guard don’t come here with less than a couple dozen men.”

“Maybe you’re in the wrong alehouse, yeah?” chimed in another.

“I’m here to see Captain Rab,” he replied.

“Time to go, Guardsman.”

Captain Ragnarsson held his hands out, empty.

“Tell him Ragnarsson’s here.”

“Let ’im pass,” came a bellow from the back of the room. “If that’s Ragnarsson ya couldn’t stop him anyway, ya little pisses.”

The three stepped back a fraction, allowing the Captain barely enough room to squeeze by, but he didn’t move.

“Get outta the man’s way, dimwit! Ragnarsson’s my guest!”

They stepped back a little more and grudgingly allowed passage, closing in behind him like an escort.

At the back of the alehouse was a broad booth, with an enormous black man sitting in the middle, legs stretched out and leather boots on the table. His bald head and bronze earring glittered in the lamplight, and white teeth shone through the thicket of his beard. He had a liter-sized mug of ale in one hand and a half-naked woman in the other, and nodded when Captain Ragnarsson approached.

“Sit, Cap’n,” he said, pointing, then roared “An ale for the Cap’n, boy!”

The boy came running with a mugful of ale, bowing again and again, and placed it on the table while staying as far from Captain Rab as possible.

Rab picked it up and slammed it down on the tabletop in front of Ragnarsson.

Their mugs clashed against each other, and they drank.

Ragnarson wiped his mouth on his arm and relaxed, letting off a long sigh of contentment.

“Ah, Rab, you know how to treat a Guardsman right, you do. That’s some fine ale.”

“Always happy to show my appreciation for the fine job you do, Ragnarsson.”

Captain Ragnarsson lifted his mug again in thanks and took another slug.

He had known Captain Rab for a long time... they’d grown up together, here on the seadocks, and had crossed paths more than once since. Ragnarsson had entered the Guard, and been stationed here for years, while Rabhitandra—Rab—had instead found work as a cargo wrangler. They had both risen through the ranks over the years, one rising to Captain of the Guard, the other to the unofficial ruler of the seadocks.

Rab knew everybody, and while he never actually broke the law himself he always seemed to have a hand in everything, one way or another. Two, possibly three of the Wardmasters here were Rab’s men. He ruled with a relatively light hand, enforcing peace and honest dealings on the wharves in return for the modest “service fees” he charged.

It was probably illegal, but as long as he kept his fees reasonable and kept the docks operating smoothly—not to mention, as long as he continued to enjoy protection from certain nobles in High City—Captain Ragnarsson was content to leave things untouched.

Informal meetings like this one were invaluable in scratching each other’s back, and they both knew they had more to gain through cooperation than war.

Besides, Ragnarsson thought, at least Rab is honest about what he does, unlike a lot of the people I deal with in High City.

“Mug’s getting a little light, Rab...”

“Boy! More ale! And bring a pitcher!”

Once their mugs were refilled, Captain Rab pushed the woman away, swatting her ass and suggesting she “Go for a little walk, will ’ya?”

The two captains set alone.

“So what’s on ya mind, Ragnarsson? Haven’t seen ya in here for quite a while.”

“We’ve got a little problem and I need a little information, Captain,” he replied. “Have you gotten any reports of gnorri around here?”

“Gnorri?” Rab scratched his beard. “Around here? No, don’t think so. Why?”

“Well, I can’t really go into that, I’m afraid, but I’d, um, appreciate it if you’d look into it, and let me know if any of your people hear anything.”

“They fish in their waters and we in ours, and anyone straying into the other’s waters are dealt with pretty quickly. Usually on a friendly basis, too, unless it’s deliberate. I can’t imagine any of the gnorri from the cities I know venturing out this way.”

“Hmm. I can’t imagine them coming this close to Celephaïs, either, but... things have happened, and I need to check.”

“I can look into it for ya,” said Rab, stretching out his hand.

They shook on it.

“Thank you, Captain Rab. I’ll be sure to appreciate any assistance you can offer.”

“Cree’lo! The Cap’n’s leaving! Walk with him out to the main so everyone understan’s he’s my guest, will ya?”

Cree’lo, one of the three men who had stopped him at the door, grunted and stood waiting.

“Safe voyage, Captain,” said Ragnarsson, draining the mug and slamming it back down on the table.

“Safe voyage, Captain,” replied Rab, raising his mug in a salute and then draining it dry.

The audience was over.

Chapter 6

Poietria Martine and her retinue continued toward the Boreas Gate, one of the three gates to Skala Eresou. As they approached the Avenue of Boreas the shops grew larger and fancier, boasting of their wares to the traffic on the Avenue. While you could find cheaper (and sometimes tastier) food deeper in the marketplace, many people preferred to pay a little more to buy it here and avoid all the mud and noise entirely.

There were three constables on duty at the gate, women dressed in leathers and armed with swords of various types. The foremost woman held up her hand.

“Poietria Martine, you may enter, but who is this lad?”

Martine squeezed his hand.

“Thank you,” she nodded in greeting. “This is Roach and I stand for him.”

“Roach, Poietria?” smiled the constable. “A rather unusual name, I would think.”

“He will have a new one by nightfall, I assure you.”

“You have never brought a male into Skala Eresou before, Poietria Martine.”

“There is a first time for everything,” she smiled. “He is a new student at my school, and I stand for him.”

“You may pass, Poietria Martine,” said the constable, standing back to allow them to walk through the stone arch freely.

The buildings and streets of the Skala Eresou enclave were much the same as the rest of Celephaïs, but Roach felt something was different. He twisted his head to and fro, looking about.

“The public fountain is up ahead on the left,” said Martine. “That big gray building in front of it is the public bath.”

Roach was listening, but he was more interested in trying to figure out what was different... of course! It wasn’t something he could see, it was something missing!

“No men, Mistress...”

“You address me as Poietria.”

He nodded.

“Men are not allowed here, Roach. Boys such as yourself may enter. Skala Eresou is run by women, protected by women, and woe be to any man who tries to enter by force!”

He thought on that.

“Uncle Sarl was a man. He hit me.”

“No man shall you here, Roach,” she reassured him. “But I may if you fail your studies!”

“Studies? You mean, school?”

“Can you read and write?”

“A little,” he said.

She laughed.

“We’ll teach you, boy! We’ll teach you more than that!”

She stopped and looked him straight in the eyes.

“But do you know what we’ll teach you most, boy?”

He shook his head, face expressionless.

“To dance!”

* * *

Poietria Martine’s dance school was in a small, quiet building on the other side of Skala Eresou, close to the di Scalotta Gate. The entrance faced the main plaza there, providing easy access to the public fountain and bath.

They dragged him to the kitchen first, and he had his first full meal in a long time... it wasn’t mealtime and the cooks had their hands full preparing the evening meal, but at a stern look from Poietria Martine they put together a perfect feast for the boy... hot soup, chicken, a heaping bowl of rice with tomatoes and beans, and an apple for dessert. It vanished without a trace as fast as they could dish it out.

When the dishes were empty, Roach stood, without a word of thanks, and asked the Poietria “Now what?”

The head cook, standing nearby eyeing the obvious satisfaction of a handsome, hungry boy in her cooking, tightened her lips, spun on her heel, and stalked off into the depths of the kitchen. Mistress Kileesh had been cook here for decades, and was famous for her silent, disapproving looks. She was also famous for being able to flense flesh with her words when finally provoked to speech.

Martine was also taken aback, but decided to let it ride for now, figuring he was still off-balance after the exciting events of the day.

“Next is a bath and clothing.”

“Don’t need a bath,” he said.

“You need a bath,” she corrected. “Now.”

She turned to Maia.

“Maia, take him to the public bath, then the barber. Here is coin for the barber,” she said, handed over a few small coins. “Find him a clean tunic, and bring him to me when you’re done.”

“Yes, Poietria,” she said, giving a shallow bow, then took Roach’s hand and led him off.

When he returned an hour later, he was a different person... clean, hair cut and brushed, wearing a linen tunic with a Greek meander embroidered around the hems, and leather sandals, he looked the perfect little prince. His face was more handsome than ever, even at his young age.

Martine sighed. He was going to be trouble as he grew into a young man. He already was trouble, she reminded herself.

Roach entered and stood before her silently.

“I’ve watched you in the marketplace toying with the Guard,” she said, “Your balance and reflexes are excellent. Your body is still weak and untrained, of course, but you will make a superb dancer. If you can stop stealing.

“We cannot keep calling you Roach, boy. What shall we call you?”

“I like Roach.”

“Rogier, then.”

“If you wish.”

“I wish. You are now Rogier, and will begin training with the first class tomorrow.”

She sat down at her desk again and nodded at Maia, who had stood waiting by door all this time.

“Show him where things are, Maia. You are relieved of your duties for the rest of the day. You are also responsible for Rogier for the rest of the day.”

She kept her face blank as she automatically replied “Yes, Poietria,” and bowed again.

She stepped out of the room, calling “Come with me.” to Rogier as she left.

Maia walked briskly through the school, paying little attention to Rogier and speaking rapidly as if hoping to get it done with as soon as possible.

The school building—there was really only one—had originally been a private estate built like a Roman domus, with a two-story building surrounding the central courtyard, garden, and other structures, but it had been a dance school for centuries, the buildings renovated and repurposed again and again by successive dance masters over the years. The school now consisted of a two-story dormitory for students and staff, a kitchen with adjoining dining room, a small library, and rooms for practice, practice, practice. In addition to an outdoor practice yard (which also featured a small vegetable patch), there was a huge wood-floored practice room, and a smaller exercise room for advanced training.

The students were almost all in their second twefths, and female. He discovered that pre-puberty males could live in Skala Eresou as long as a woman stood for them, but once they reached puberty they would need a special pass from the Council, the women running Skala Eresou. Maia explained he was the only male at the school, and one of the youngest students accepted in recent times.

He thought Maia didn’t like men in general, and judging from the way she avoided approaching him as much as possible, probably feared them.

He listened quietly, taking in everything without comment or question.

It was late afternoon by now, and the students were studying their books. Most sat on the floor, a few lucky ones were seated on one of the benches in the library. They were reading from scrolls and a few books, reciting quietly to themselves.

“What are they doing?” he asked.

“Learning the lines.”

“Lines?”

“The next dance will have both music and speech, and the timing will depend on the speech. They are memorizing the actor’s lines.”

“How can you know what the actor will say?”

“It’s written in the book,” she told him, and pulled a scroll out of one of the shelves. “Here, see?”

She pulled the scroll partially open, revealing tightly packed letters.

Rogier stared at it blankly.

Maia lowered the scroll, looking Rogier in the eyes for perhaps the first time.

“You can’t read, can you?”

He shook his head.

She laughed. “That’s why there aren’t any boys here! Until you came!”

She snapped the scroll tight again and dropped it back into its slot.

* * *

One afternoon, after practice was over for the day and the students could enjoy a little free time before the evening meal, Maia noticed Rogier crouching in the outdoor practice yard, near the herb garden. Curious, she looked closer.

He was motionless, hunched over, head down, staring intently at something.

She squinted to see better... it was a mouse!

It was struggling wildly to escape, trying to leap, and biting at its foot.

She took a step closer to see better.

A bamboo skewer stuck up through the mouse’s leg, impaling it to the ground, and Rogier was just watching its struggles, making no move to free it.

She gasped.

He must have impaled it!

She hated mice, but the thought of deliberately stabbing a living thing like that and just watching it die... she gagged.

Rogier turned and looked at her, face expressionless.

“Me and the cat were mousing,” he said. “Bwada is a good mouser, but I’s even faster.”

Bwada, a huge black-and-white cat that had adopted the school as its home some years before, sat some distance away, watching the mouse.

Rogier and pulled the skewer up out of the ground with one hand, and grasped the mouse by the back of the neck with his other, then abruptly twisted its neck around and casually lobbed the writhing body toward the cat.

He turned to face her.

“What’s for dinner tonight, Maia? I’s hungry!”

Mouth still open in shock, she watched him walk back inside without a word.

* * *

Rogier’s days at the school were not very enjoyable, but even at their worst they were far superior to living on the streets. Ample (sometimes even good) food, safety, soft blankets, even a bath every day if he liked!

Because of his young age he was assigned a personal tutor, in addition to his practice in the first level. Maia was furious with him, because tutoring him meant she lost what little free time she enjoyed.

He mastered the shapes of the letters very quickly, and quickly mastered both block and script. On demand he could write any letter, or all of them, quickly and clearly.

But try as he might he could not read words, and could not write them.

She pointed at the book once more.

“This word. What is the first letter?”

“C.”

“And the second one?”

“A.”

“And the last letter?”

“T.”

“And what does C-A-T spell?”

Rogier was silent. He smiled at her with his best, most innocent smile, but obviously had no idea.

“She ate tea?”

Maia slammed the book back onto the stone wall.

“No! CAT is cat, you idiot.” She jumped to her feet, pacing back and forth in the garden in her fury. “Why can you not see that, you imbecile! I’ve shown you again and again and again and still you can’t read the simplest word!”

“I can write CAT,” he suggested hopefully.

“But you don’t know what it means, do you?”

“No,” he answered, quite satisfied with himself.

He picked up his pen again and began to draw, ignoring her furious pacing.

Minutes passed in silence and Maia approached to see what he was writing... she looked over his shoulder at the sheet of paper in front of him on the ground.

His pen practically flew over the sheet, leaping to the inkpot every so often, then flashing back to the paper where a face was rapidly emerging. As she watched the strands of hair multiplied, growing fuller and blacker, drawn into a braid at the back. The nose grew more evident, and scattering of freckles emerged. Large, slightly tilted eyes opened on the page, staring back into her own.

It was her... he was drawing her face with incredible speed, never hesitating, and never turning to look at her face!

It was done.

Rogier looked at it for a second, judging his work, then nonchalantly crumpled it into a ball and pushed it aside, ready to start on a new picture.

Maia gasped, knelt, reached for that crumpled sheet.

“May I... May I keep this, Rogier?”

He didn’t even look up.

“It’s trash.”

She squatted, gently smoothing out the wrinkles. The ink had smeared a little but every perfection and imperfection of youth and beauty was there, captured in black and white.

She stared into its eyes, entranced, then glanced to see what Rogier was working on now.

It was the face of an angry little man, with a sharp nose, small eyes set deep under bushy brows, receding hairline, sagging cheeks in a face that reeked of too much drink and too few hopes.

“Who is that?”

“Uncle Sarl.”

“Who? You have an uncle?”

“No. He’s dead.”

“But that drawing is so lifelike!”

After a minute he finished the drawing, and crumpled it up like the first.

She gingerly reached out, picking it up to add to her growing collection.

Later, as she was leaving the evening meal, Poietria Martine beckoned her over, ushering her into her room.

“Sit, Maia,” she invited, waving her to a chair. “Show me his drawings.”

She hurried to pull them out of her tunic pocket. There were eleven, in all.

“I didn’t steal them, Poietria! He said they were trash, and I was going to show them to you...”

“Quiet, girl,” hushed Martine. “You did nothing wrong.”

She spread them out of the tabletop, examining them closely. She brought the oil lamp closer to illuminate Maia’s face, comparing it to the drawing.

“I recognize these pictures, of course, of students and staff, but who are these people?”

“He said this one was Uncle Sarl—he said Uncle Sarl was dead—and this one is a constable named Ng, and this one a merchant named Thabouti, uh, Thabouti something, I forget.”

“Enough. Yes, this is Sergeant Ng, I remember. Do you recognize him?”

“Sort of... I didn’t really look at him, to be honest.”

Martine nodded to herself.

“He is very good, isn’t he?”

“Yes, Poietria.”

“You may keep them.” Martine handed them back. “How does his reading and writing progress?”

“Poietria, his letters are beautiful, his script immaculate,” Maia said, “but he cannot spell, he cannot read or write even the simplest word, no matter how I try.”

She hung her head.

“I will try harder, Poietria! I promise!”

“Oh, hush, child. You cannot squeeze water from a stone.”

Martine stood.

“I will take over his tutoring now, Maia. You may return to your normal duties.”

“Thank you, Poietria. I will...”

“You may go now,” interrupted Martine. Waving her hand toward the door.

Maia scurried the doorway, turned to bow once more, and left.

* * *

The first level was mostly girls in their first twelfth, a hodge-podge of different races, colors, styles, even dialects. They all had one thing in common, though: one way or another they had been separated from their families and brought her to dance. They were no longer daughters of farmers or nobles or soldiers, but merely students stumbling through their studies as their bodies matured.

The majority already knew their letters, and could read musical notation; the few who didn’t were learning, goaded on by the staff and the scorn of their fellow students.

Everyone knew Rogier couldn’t read or write, and he became the convenient target of choice. As the youngest, he was also put in charge of cleaning the toilets, and keeping the tank on the roof full of water. Water was drawn from the city pipes, but had to be pumped up to the rooftop manually, drawing a lever back and forth innumerable times until the tank was full. It was tiring, boring work that the students all hated, and they agreed Rogier needed the exercise to build up muscle because he was so small and puny. And because he was the only boy.

Rogier never complained, and never had to be told to do the job... he merely did it every morning, usually before the others woke, and never mentioned it unless asked. The tank was full, the toilets clean, but they all felt cheated that it didn’t seem to bother him.

The morning was full of exercises to build strength, flexibility, and control.

Rogier was stronger than about half of the girls in the first level, and his small stature made it impossible to achieve the leverage they enjoyed with longer limbs, but he easily surpassed all but one of them in flexibility, and surpassed them all in fine control... whether with a finger, a wand, or a thrown rock, he could touch the smallest target the first time, every time, from a standing or a running start.

One night they decided he needed to be taken down a notch, and hatched a plan.

First level students slept on the second floor, in large dormitory style rooms. They were not allowed to leave their rooms at night, except to visit the toilet, and while they could sneak to other rooms, the only ways out were either past the dance teacher whose room was just in front of the stairs—and who was known to be a very light sleeper—or leap over the balcony into the open atrium.

The entire atrium was a large pond with only a small rock or two breaking the surface, and facing it across the encircling hallway were the rooms of other school staff. They all knew the stories of students who had leapt the railing, hoping to leave the school after hours—the front gate was only a few meters from there—but had ended up in the water, or hurt on the stones of the edge, and faced painful punishment from angry teachers.

“Rogier, tonight you must prove yourself to become one of us,” said Tonya, one of the girls in his level. “Go to the kitchen and bring back some fruit for us.”

“What fruit?”

“Oh, any fruit will do,” said Tonya, not expecting him to succeed.

He nodded, and lay down on his blanket again.

They waited to see what he would do, but he merely closed his eyes and waited. As time passed they gradually drifted off to their own sleeping places, whispering that he had given up, or would stupidly try the stairs and be caught.

Later, pitch dark in the silence of the night, he rose and walked to the balcony overlooking the pond. It was invisible in the darkness, no reflections of the moon or stars hidden in the clouded sky.

Without hesitating he grasped the balcony and vaulted over as Tonya watched him from her blanket. She waited to hear the splash, but there was only silence... she threw back her blanket and raced to the edge.

He was gone, but there was still no splash, no noise at all. But he had jumped.

In total darkness.

She waited, and in a few minutes she heard the rustle of clothing below, and suddenly Rogier leapt up from below, grasping the railing with one hand to haul himself up and over.

He held a bag of apples in the other.

She stepped back in disbelief. He placed one apple on the top of the railing, carefully balanced, and handed her the bag.

He walked to his blanket without a word and lay down. The floor where he walked was dry; he had not stepped into the water at all.

As she stood in shock, he flicked a stone from his finger into the apple, and Tonya stared as it tipped, rocked, and finally fell down, down, into the pond with a loud splash.

She was still standing there when the door to the dance teacher’s room opened, and light from the oil lamp clearly illuminated the bag of apples in her hand.

* * *

Poietria Martine considered the girl’s story.

Nobody had ever jumped from the second floor to land on the tiny rocks in the pool before, especially on a pitch-black night with no moon or stars. And while it was not impossible to jump from there back up to grab the railing it would be a difficult leap for a grown man, let alone a boy of ten or less.

Then again, he had already demonstrated the agility of a monkey while making fools of those Guards...

The boy had been in his blankets, feet dry, while Tonya had been standing at the railing with the apples.

Had she merely used the stairs and was boasting?

That seemed unlikely... the stairs creaked quite loudly, by intent, and innumerable other students had been heard and caught in the act.

“You are on kitchen duty for two twelves,” she pronounced.

Tonya sighed, head down.

“Yes, Poietria. Thank you, Poietria.”

Kitchen duty meant rising at four every morning to prepare food, then serving and scrubbing after, in addition to all her regular duties and studies. Usually kitchen duty was rotated, with each girl handling it for only one day at a time, two or three times a year, but now she would spend a month in that purgatory.

As they all rose to leave the room, Martine beckoned Rogier.

“Rogier, stay.”

He sat back down on the floor and waited for the room to clear.

When it was empty she walked closer, hands behind her back.

“Did you do it?”

“No, Poietria.”

“I see. Could you leap from the second floor and land on the rocks as she describes?”

“No, Poietria. The rocks are too small. I would fall into the water.”

“You’re sure.”

“Yes, Poietria,” he smiled. “I don’t think anyone could do that.”

“Can you see in the dark, Rogier?”

“No, Poietria.”

“I’m going to blindfold you, Rogier,” she said, picking up a piece of cloth from the table and wrapping it around his eyes. She tied it tight, and checked that it blocked his vision completely.

“I want you to turn around in that spot, three times.”

He turned around three times, feet moving precisely, without losing his balance at all. His arms remained loose at his sides, his chin down in a normal position as he made no effort to try to see.

“Three,” he said.

“Where is the picture of the dragon?”

He pointed diagonally to the right, directly at the picture hanging on the wall.

“Where is the apple from the pond?”

He turned halfway around, and pointed at the apple on the table.

“Take this stone,” she said, “and hit the apple with it.”

He threw the stone with considerable force; she stared at the apple as it rocked back and forth, the stone half-embedded in its flesh.

“Here is a second stone,” she said, handing it to him. “When I tell you I want you to hit the apple with it again.”

She walked over to the apple and moved it half a meter to the right, making sure not to block Rogier’s view, even though he was wearing a blindfold.

“Throw.”

The stone whizzed through the space where the apple had been, clattering off the back wall.

“You moved it,” he said.

“Yes, I did. And you couldn’t tell that I moved it. How did you know where the apple was the first time?”

“I remembered.”

“You remembered where it was, and were able to hit it even after spinning blindfolded!?”

“Yes.”

She sat down, looking at him quizzically.

“You may go, Rogier.”

“May I take the blindfold off?”

“Yes, of course. Go.”

He handed her the blindfold and left silently, not pausing to bow on the way out.

Chapter 7

Sergeant Jabari took another sip of tea. She knew she shouldn’t, that it would just make her bladder hurt even more, but her mouth was so dry she figured it was worth it.

The shack they were hiding in was old and dusty; the slightest movement would raise a cloud to make them cough and their eyes water. They sat there, as still as they could, just watching the Wall and talking sporadically in low voices.

The sky was lightening a little already. Dawn was still an hour off, she guessed, but shortly it would be light enough that residents would begin stirring, and she could go catch a nap. One of the other Guards would take over.

“No luck this time, I guess,” she said.

Larima grunted. She was tired, too, even though she’d come out at midnight to change with one of the other Guards. She’d stay here for another four hours until someone replaced her, while Jabari was gone.

Mistress de la Corda was a very dead end so far, and their best hope of getting to the bottom of it was to catch someone going into that building.

Shortly, Rasha entered from the rear, and squatted down next to her, looking out at the Wall through one of the cracks in the shack wall.

“Go get some sleep, Sarge. Me and Larima’ll take it for awhile.”

“Thanks. Gotta pee anyway,” she said, and covered her nose and mouth with a cloth as she rose, surrounded by clouds of dust. “Larima, you’re in charge.”

Outside, she took a deep breath of air, slapped some of the dust off her clothes, and stretched.

The public bath had a toilet, and she headed there first... the bath would be closed this early in the morning, but not the toilet. And then home for some winks.

Around noon she awoke, still a bit fuzzy from lack of sleep but good enough. She headed to the Guard barracks to talk to Ragnarsson.

The Captain had stayed by the Skala Eresou gate the first night, hoping for word of a visitor, but only that once. He had other responsibilities, too, and couldn’t spend all his time drinking tea and waiting for her to call.

Either they’d been spotted, or there simply weren’t any visitors.

The Captain was in his office shuffling paper as he was so frequently these days.

“Sergeant Ng’s men have been asking around,” said the Captain, “and it seems that this de la Corda had a boyfriend. They were seen several times down in the Lofts.”

The Lofts, originally named after the haylofts that once stood there before Celephaïs expanded to its present size, was the entertainment district, with an ever-changing collection of theaters, bars, gambling halls, and of course brothels.

“Does this boyfriend have a name?”

“Cuk’y’marek, originally of Chaldaea. For what it’s worth. He’s either left Celephaïs, or he’s the one who died with de la Corda. Nobody’s seen him since then.”

“Anyone know where he was staying?”

“Just a flophouse in The Lofts. We already checked, but there’s nothing there at all.”

“So, another dead end?”

“Other than they were seen together for about a year, zip.”

“Well, shit...”

“Yeah. More tea?”

“Thanks.”

“Nothing at your end?”

Jabari sipped the tea, feeling more awake already.

“Actually,” she said, “ there’s something I wanted to ask you about. It’s... delicate”

“Delicate? As in, nobles?”

“Yeah. Twice in the last week a servant from High City has come to Skala Eresou, for no particular reason that we could see. They wandered around near the bath...”

“Boreas Bath?” the captain interrupted.

“Yessir, the same one. They didn’t actually go to de la Corda’s shop, but they walked past it a few times.”

The Captain nodded, listening.

“The second woman asked the bathhouse what had happened, pointing at the wreckage. The bathhouse didn’t know anything, of course, and just said there’d been a fire and de la Corda and some unknown man had been found dead.”

“Whose servants?”

“Poietes Liang Caihong.”

“Damn. A Poietes and a noble!”

“Yessir. He’s out of my reach, I’m afraid.”

Ragnarsson lifted his cup to drink, found it empty, and put it back down with a scowl.

“I asked some people who would know down at the seadocks, Jabari, and there are no reports of any gnorri in the area. Zero. The agreement with them is holding as far as anyone knows, but since they don’t have any cities around here nobody’s even seen one in these parts for years. It’s still not impossible, but a gnorri swimming that sewer pipe seems pretty unlikely.”

“No boat, no swimmer... you sure about entry from the upstream end?”

“If Artificer Marcus is sure, I’m sure. He takes his work very seriously.”

“So now what?”

“Keep digging, Jabari, keep digging,” said Ragnarsson. “And I’ll talk to a few people in High City.”

“Yessir.”

After Jabari left, Ragnarsson called in his second, a woman named Wang Ai. She was quiet, capable, and had left fingernail furrows across his back once, long ago.

“Wang, you know anything about Poietes Liang Caihong?”

She shook her head.

“Not really... He’s up in High City and I never go that way if I can avoid it... everyone’s too prancy for me. Yourself excluded, of course.”

“Of course,” he agreed dryly. “His name has turned up in this Skala Eresou murder.”

He filled her in on the latest details.

“Would you have better luck looking into his connection that I would?”

She thought for a moment.

“Maybe. I don’t know if he maintains any sort of connection with the local Chinese community or not, but if he does I can get find out what anyone outside High City knows, I think. You’d have better luck digging around up there, though.”

Ragnarsson made a grimace. “Yeah, but I don’t look forward to it. They always smile, but the knives are right there waiting for you to make a slip.”

“That’s what they pay you for, right?” She grinned. “How soon do you need this?”

“We’re getting nowhere in Skala Eresou, and the trail’s getting cold. Soon.”

“I’m on it, Cap. I’ll go look up a few friends now, if that’s OK?”

“Yeah, go. And thanks.”

“Sir,” she said, nodding in acknowledgment, and slipped out.

* * *

That evening as he was getting ready to walk back to his home in High City, Wang walked back in. She shrugged out of her harness, hanging it up on the wall, and sat down at his desk with a thump.

“You look tired, Wang.”

“Tired, sir. Had to convince a few people to let me talk to a few other people. It can get complicated.”

Ragnarsson laughed. “Tell me about it! I ran into the same problem down on the seadocks the other day.”

“But you were in one of those two-tough-guys-face-each-other-down situations; I had to convince a few men they really shouldn’t try to give a girl a hard time.”

“Life’s a bitch at times,” he said, handing her a glass of wine and pouring another for himself. “See if this helps ease the pain.”

She took it with a nod of thanks, and drank a slug.

“So this Liang guy is apparently pretty well known in certain circles. It seems he’s been selling something very expensive to a very select clientele. He never shows himself, but his servants always seem to be involved in the transaction one way or another.

“Word on the street is he’s pushing honeydrops.”

Ragnarsson sighed.

“So that’s it, then... this is all connected.”

“Looks that way, Captain.”

“Did anyone have any ideas about where he’s getting the stuff?”

“Nope, and that’s pretty strange in itself. Not a whisper. But he seems to have a lot of it.”

“You have a list of customers?”

“Yeah, a few known customers and a few more that show the signs,” she said, handing over a sheet of paper.

The Honey of the Goddess, usually found in small beads that looked like pearls, iridescent and highly reflective, could delay aging. It wasn’t physically habit-forming, but its effect gradually lessened, requiring the user to consume more and more honeydrops to hold back the tide of aging until they finally died—usually of a horrible, accelerated death.

Using honeydrops meant sure death, but to many that was a small price to pay for extra years of youth and vitality instead of dying of old age.

He glanced over the list, recognizing most of the names as wealthy—and old—residents of the city. This was way, way over his paygrade.

He’d have to take it to the Pinnacle.

* * *

The Street of Pillars was the only road that ran straight through all three walls, from the sea direct to the Pinnacle, where it ended in the Pinnacle Gate. From there the paved road switch-backed up the steep flanks of the brownish-black talon of bedrock that was the Pinnacle, passing various buildings and parks scattered across its flanks like cherry blossom petals, their pink marble glowing in the sunlight, before finally reaching the wide, open top where the Palace of the Seventy Delights stood.

Resplendent in their uniform of polished leather and crimson cloth, the constables at the gate saluted him crisply, and bowed when has handed them his sword. Even as a sergeant of the Watch, he had to leave his sword at the gate to the Pinnacle. He could keep his dagger, of course—everyone had a dagger or two.

“You may pass, Captain Ragnarsson.”

He nodded his thanks and stepped onto the paved slope, trudging up.

He’d sent a messenger earlier requesting audience on a matter of pressing urgency, and wondered who would be waiting for him.

He wasn’t going to the Palace, of course, only one of the several small buildings on the way intended for this very purpose.

The meeting place was a simple dome of greenish marble streaked with gold, on columns of white. Surrounded by flowers and a few small shrubs, it offered a stunning view of the city below, with the seadocks stretching out into the waters of the Celephaïs Strait. It was also isolated, ensuring that anything said here would remain secret.

Chuang, the King’s advisor, was waiting, smoking on a long-stemmed pipe. A small pot of tea and two cups sat nearby.

“Captain Ragnarsson, on time as ever I see,” he said. “At ease, please. Sit.”

“Thank you, Master Chuang. I apologize for taking time from your busy schedule, but I believe the matter is urgent... and delicate.”

“Ah. So the matter of the Honey of the Goddess has ascended to High City, then?”

“You are aware of the honeydrops!?” Ragnarsson was astonished. “I thought we had been keeping that fairly quiet...”

“You have. I have very good ears.”

Ragnarsson grimaced.

“So I see. But no matter... it will make our discussion easier.”

“Please, tell me what you have discovered. My sources are good, but you hold many of the strings.”

He told the entire story to Chuang, ending with the suggestion that Poietes Liang Caihong was involved, and possibly the key to the whole affair.

Chuang sipped his tea.

“Poietes Liang is a master athlete, famed for his abilities in the sports and martial arts, and a key supporter of the Games. He is also famous for his beauty, and his sexual conquests of both men and women. I would not be surprised to hear that his youth and beauty were failing, and he turned to honey.”

“We have no proof of anything, Master Chuang.”

“But you believe the facts point that way, do you not?”

“Yes. There is little I can do in High City, though, although my home is there.”

“Yes, I agree this is a matter for the King. Or an Agent,” murmured Chuang, obviously deep in thought. He picked a small bell up from the table and rang it once.

Ragnarsson heard boots running toward them and started to leap up, only to be waved back down by Chuang.

A Guard appeared, sword sheathed, and stood at attention.

“Yes, Master Chuang?”

“Take horses, and bring the Chief Artificer here immediately. Instruct him to bring recent plans related to the proposed cistern repair. Take several men with you and provide him with every assistance. And ask Commander Britomartis if she would join us for a moment.”

The man bowed and raced off down the road toward the gate.

Chuang turned to the captain again.

“How familiar are you with the Honey of the Goddess, Captain?”

“Not at all, Master Chuang. I have seen honeydrops, of course, but nothing more.”

“They are found only in Khor, a village on the Zuro River between Hlanith and Lhosk. Have you ever been there?”

“No, Master Chuang. I’ve visited Lhosk, but no other places across the Celephaïs Strait.”

“It’s a tiny village, built on top of a rock overlooking the Zuro. The villagers are known as pearl-fishers, and it is generally thought that the honeydrops are harvested from their pearl beds, either in the river delta or the sea itself.”

Ragnarsson nodded.

“I fear that someone—possibly Poietes Liang—has a source of the Honey here in Celephaïs. And if that is the case, Captain Ragnarsson, the matter is most urgent. And most dangerous.”

The Captain wanted to ask more about the Honey and the mentioned danger, but it was obvious that Chuang wasn’t going to explain himself. They watched a three-master set to sea, sails snapping into billows with the wind, exposing the bright red shantak on the mainsail. A ship of Inganok, then.

“...and make sure he gets that ballista fixed. Today, Drust!”

It was a woman’s voice, coming from the inclined Pinnacle road.

Quick footsteps approached, and a stunningly beautiful woman stepped around the corner to join them. She had flawless, pale skin and red-tinged cheeks, framed by short brown curls, and was clearly a warrior: a rough tunic, mostly hidden behind a leather vest and skirt sewn with bronze plates of armor, a harness crossing her with a dagger, and two scimitars on her back, their worn hilts protruding up behind her shoulders on either side.

“Master Chuang, your messenger just caught me. Having some trouble with one of the crews at the Palace.”

He waved her over.

“Commander Britomartis, this is Captain Ragnarsson of the city Watch. I believe you’ve met already?”

The captain, who had hurriedly stood up as she entered, now saluted.

“Yes, Master Chuang, we meet often. Commander, I am at your service.”

“At ease, Captain. We’re here to work, not strut.”

She unceremoniously sat down on an empty bench and started to reach for the tea, then noticed there were only two cups, both being used.

“Mater Chuang? May I?”

“Yes, please,” he nodded.

She rang the bell and another guard appeared. She told him to fetch more tea and cups, and Chuang mentioned that another person would be joining them shortly. The guard quickly scurried off.

“Who else is coming?” Britomartis asked.

“The Chief Artificer,” said Chuang.

She raised one eyebrow, waiting.

“It seems we have a problem involving High City, the waterworks, and the Honey of the Goddess,” said Chuang quietly. “Marcus will join us shortly, and perhaps we can wait until then to discuss the details.”

“Of course, Master Chuang. May I ask how High City fits into this?”

“We aren’t sure yet, but it looks like Poietes Liang is involved.”

“Poietes Liang... that’s awkward,” she said, then turned toward the roadway, where the guard had just arrived. “Come!”

The guard brought in a tray with a large teapot and six cups, plus a small basket of sweet rolls. He placed it on the table, clearing away the first teapot and cups, bowed, all without saying a word.

“Thank you, Garius,” said Britomartis. “When the Chief Artificer arrives he is to be shown in at once.”

“Yes, Commander.”

He saluted and left.

She turned back to the other two.

“So. Liang. I’m interested to hear your tale, Captain.”

He smiled. “I’d rather hear yours, Commander... it is difficult to believe all the tales one hears in the alehouses, but your name pops up quite often from reliable people.”

“I’m sure it’s just exaggeration,” she replied. “A good story always makes the wine taste better.”

She sipped her tea.

“But perhaps we should just wait for the Chief Artificer,” she added, making it clear she was here on business. Ragnarsson took the hint.

Officially speaking, Britomartis was commander of the King’s Guard, and not in the chain of command for the city Watch, which in theory reported directly to the King. In that sense, he would be her equal, as they both took their orders and accepted their duties from the King.

In practice, though, there was no question that she was in charge. In emergencies, the Commander of the King’s Guard could function as an Agent of the King. In other words, she could speak for the King, and while she might be executed later by the King for abusing her authority, when she spoke, people jumped to obey.

And she was clearly deferring to Chuang here, who was (again, in theory) merely an advisor to the King.

Poor Ragnarsson was low man on the totem pole.

In another few minutes there was a clatter of hooves, and the Chief Artificer arrived, carrying a rolled-up plan under his arm.

“Master Chuang, Commander,” he greeted them, nodding, and another nod to Captain Ragnarsson. “I brought the latest cistern plan; I believe everything else is up to date.”

“Sit, Marcus,” gestured Chuang. “I will update the memory stick while you have some tea and listen to Captain Ragnarsson. I know you’ve heard some of this already, but the Commander has not, and you should hear the full story.”

Chuang took the rolled-up plan and spread it out on the paving stones near the table, placing rocks on the four corners to hold it flat. He pulled a small black case from his sleeve. Covered in black leather, it looked like it might hold a small pipe, for example. He opened it and pulled out a short rod of bone or ivory, covered with intricate carvings.

Ragnarsson wanted to watch when Chuang was doing but dragged his eyes back to Britomartis and Marcus, who were waiting.

He went through the entire story once again, pausing only to answer immediate questions for clarification.

After he finished the four of them sat silent for a moment.

“You think the damaged cistern and the Honey are related, then?” asked Britomartis.

Chuang nodded.

“The timing is very suspicious, but hopefully we can get a better idea from Chief Marcus’s plans.” He started to clear the table, and everyone else immediately jumped to move their own cups out of the way.

Chuang stood the ivory-colored rod on end in the center of the table, then placed a small cone of black incense into a cavity at the base. He lit it with his flint, and it immediately began to release a cloud of bluish-gray smoke, which was somehow sucked into the rod, and then released in thin streams of ghostly vapor across the tabletop, slowly forming into lines that wavered and quivered, but grew thicker and darker as they watched.

“A memory stick!” breathed Ragnarsson. “I’ve never seen one before!”

“This is a complete map of the city,” explained Chuang. “We can see any part of the city, including all of its aqueducts and tunnels. And more to the point, we can also see the shack you mentioned—here—and the sewage tunnel running under it,” he pointed to a ghostly line on the table, “and the damaged cistern.”

Britomartis reached out and tapped a small rectangle in High City.

“This is Liang’s estate.”

“Well, I’d say that’s pretty strong evidence, wouldn’t you?” asked Chuang.

Marcus nodded.

The sewage line ran from the shack in Skala Eresou to the damaged cistern. And half of the damaged underground cistern was on the estate of Poietes Liang Caihong.

“Chief Marcus, cut the water supply to that cistern immediately, if it isn’t already. And I think we’re going to need more people,” said Chuang. He picked up the bell again to summon the guard. “Bring Alchemist Ihejirika at once,” he ordered, then turned to Captain Ragnarsson.

“Captain Ragnarsson, we have almost certainly been invaded, and Poietes Liang is either a traitor or one of the invaders. We face a noble’s castle defended by his personal guard, and an unknown number of human and other defenders at the cistern. As Captain of the city Watch you will be in charge. Commander Britomartis of the King’s Guard and I will assist you.”

Ragnarsson was speechless.

“Invaded...? Commander Britomartis and you will...? I...”

“Thank you, Captain,” nodded Britomartis. “Master Chuang and I will deal with High City, and with your permission I will bring the Alchemist and his equipment, along with some raptors, and troops familiar with this enemy. Captain, you have a free hand in selecting your own force. I suggest two to three dozen should be sufficient. For weapons and armor the Armory is yours.”

“I... thank you, Commander, Master Chuang.” Captain Ragnarsson recovered, stood straight, and saluted. “But... what invasion, exactly? And why the Alchemist?”

Chuang rubbed his forehead.

“I mentioned the source of the Honey of the Goddess earlier, Captain. I think the time has come to explain in more detail.”

Chapter 8

For the first time, Rogier was on shopping detail, which meant he would be joining several other students and the cook on a trip to the market. The cook, of course, visited the fish market down by the seadocks, and the meat and produce market where Rogier had once roamed, every day. Many vendors brought their foods directly to the school, providing regular deliveries at reduced prices in return for stable revenue, but the cook made a point to visit the markets and select fresh fruit, vegetables, meat, and fish herself as often as possible.

Poietria Martine had deliberately kept Rogier restricted to the school until she felt sure he could restrain himself from stealing.

There had been a few strange incidents lately which he might have been involved with, but children were always getting into trouble, and it was impossible to tell just who the culprit might be in many cases.

That bag of apples, for example... Martine wondered yet again whether Tonya or Rogier was lying. Had she rewarded Rogier for the theft, in a way, by punishing only Tonya? But to be honest he had so much more potential than Tonya, who would never be more than an average dancer.

Rogier was... exceptional. In many ways. In addition to his superior balance and acrobatic skills, he also had an astounding memory, including scenes and faces, and a phenomenal facility with numbers: he could sketch a room that he had seen only once, with incredible accuracy and skill, from memory, and could calculate complex sums and multiplications almost instantly in his head.

In spite of all those gifts, he could not read or write even the simplest words. He could write letters, but only as meaningless shapes.

She wasn’t too worried about letting him visit the marketplace after all this time, because Rogier didn’t even look like the same person anymore. He had grown a little bit, and his shoulders were broader, but a clean face, shorter hair, and decent clothes—she’d thrown away that hideous dhoti the first day—made him look like a completely different person.

If he could just keep his mouth shut there should be no problems, she thought.

* * *

Mistress Kileesh, the head cook, led the way, head high and back straight in spite of her advanced age. She was only a few centimeters taller than Rogier, and although he was growing fast thanks to her cooking, he was still only a young boy. Accompanying them were an assistant cook—Britta—and two other students, Ri Torshell from the first level, and Opal from the second.

Britta and all three students had packs, and would be expected to carry back whatever the head cook purchased. Their opinions and desires were not needed, only their muscles.

Their first stop was the fish market, where the head cook quickly snapped up two dozen fresh-caught mackerel packed with roe, the treat of the season, along with a bushel of mussels (which was to be delivered). She walked past the fishmongers, ignoring their boasts and pleas as she sniffed in disdain at their offerings or prodded a scaly carcass to judge its freshness.

Everyone knew her, of course; she’d been visiting the fish market longer than most of them had.

The next stop was the market where the local farming community sold its wares: meat, fruit, and vegetables, mostly. Meat and vegetables were already delivered on almost a daily basis, but Mistress Kileesh preferred to choose her own fruit... and today, in addition to a fresh shipment of small, reddish oranges, she discovered a bushel of snailberries—bright red, the berries usually had a slight spiral shape, earning them their name. They had a sweet, slightly metallic flavor.

They were still on the horse-drawn cart, fresh from the field and not yet even for sale.

“Whose cart is this?” she demanded in her abrasive squall, and a dark, turbaned man popped out of a nearby shop.

“Mistress Kileesh, and how are you this fine morning! So good to see you looking so well!”

She scowled him into silence.

“How much for the berries, Gil’kalocken?”

“For you, Mistress Kileesh, only twelve coppers.”

“I don’t want the cart, you thief, only the berries!”

“Ten, then, special for you.”

“Five, or I go elsewhere.”

“Nine. Less and my children would go hungry!”

“A thief and a liar. Seven,” she snapped, holding out her palm with seven coins on it. She hadn’t taken them from her wallet, and must have decided what she would pay in advance.

“Seven, then. You drive a hard bargain,” he said, but did not seem overly upset at the discount.

“And you’ll deliver them, of course.”

He sighed.

“Of course, Mistress Kileesh... I always do. I always do.”

Without another word she turned back to the street and began walking again, eyes flicking to other shops to check their wares. Her train followed, dripping mackerel-scented water as they went.

* * *

After they finished at the vegetable market, their packs significantly heavier and Mistress Kileesh’s wallet somewhat lighter, than began the trudge back to the school. The mackerels had grown quite a bit heavier than when they’d started, and the smell had permeated everything quite thoroughly.

“Well, well, if it isn’t Roach,” came a laugh. “You’ve grown a bit, I see.”

It was Jay, the Watch constable.

Roach turned to face the man, his own expression blank.

“Were you talking to me? I think you must have me confused with someone else.”

“Oh, I don’t think so, Roach. I never forget a face, or a thief.”

Mistress Kileesh stepped in between them.

“We’re in a hurry,” she stated. “Can’t you see the fish is spoiling?”

“This is the little thief we caught, Roach, right?”

“No, this is a student at the school. His name’s Rogier.”

The constable turned to Rogier. “What’s your name, boy?”

“Rogier.”

“That’s ‘Rogier, sir,’ boy.”

“Rogier, sir.”

“You remember me, Roach?”

“No, sir. This is the first time Mistress Kileesh has brought me to the market.”

“You’re Roach, aren’t you?”

“I’m a boy, sir, not a roach.”

“Hmph,” broke in Mistress Kileesh. “Time to go, Rogier. Good day.”

Jay stood and watched them walk away.

He had little doubt it was the same boy, and when he flashed the same insult behind his back with his fingers, he knew it.

Chapter 9

They gathered at the Boreas Gate to High City, blocking traffic and earning shouts of anger from carts and passers-by, which they studiously ignored.

In addition to the six dozen city constables with their sergeants and all armed and armored for combat, the Captain also brought his own personal force of a dozen veterans. With him were Commander Britomartis, leading two dozen of the King’s Guard and a dozen raptors. They were joined by the Chief Artificer with a few assistants, and the Alchemist and her assistant, who pulled a cart carrying small ceramic jars.

Britomartis standing at his shoulder, Captain Ragnarsson issued last-minute commands.

“Sergeants Ng and Rodriguez, I want all gates to High City sealed. Nobody gets in or out without authorization from me, Commander Britomartis, or Master Chuang. Or a Writ.

“Sergeant Wright, this is your ward and you are most familiar with it. Surround and isolate the estate. Again, nobody in or out. I want at least a half dozen constables on the cistern next to the estate, too. You can call on Sergeant Rossi if you have a problem.

“Sergeant Jabari, since you started this whole thing, you get to come with me inside.

“Sergeant Rossi, you are to protect the Chief Artificer and the Alchemist, and escort them inside the estate when I call. If Sergeant Wright needs help, stopping any breakout has top priority.

“All of you, commandeer more horses or anything else if you need it. This is High City and we don’t want to kill anybody important if we can avoid it, but defend yourselves, and kill if you must.

“Let me be very clear: I expect us to be attacked by armed enemies. If they do not yield, kill them, and make sure they are either dead or very securely bound before moving on. Capture or kill, but nobody gets out of there.

“Any questions?”

There was a rumble of conversation and shuffling, but no verbal response.

Britomartis stepped forward.

“Britomartis of the King’s Guard. With me is Master Chuang. Call one of us if some noble attempts to interfere. Sergeant Wright, I expect you to have the most sensitive mission, and difficult even with your two dozen men. While I also hope you can avoid killing any nobles, nobody gets in or out. If you have to kill them to ensure that, so be it.”

While they spoke, Chuang had been watching the gate, apparently waiting for someone, and finally the slapping of sandals announced that he had arrived: a fat man with graying hair and overly red face, perhaps in his fifties, came rushing to the gate from the High City side.

“Master Chuang!” he panted. “My sincere apologies for having kept you waiting; I came at once at your summons.”

“Wardmaster Debrai, I summoned you as commanded by Captain Ragnarsson of the Watch.”

The Captain stepped forward.

“Wardmaster Debrai, I hereby render notice that we are entering High City as an emergency measure. Your cooperation is appreciated.” He turned to his troops. “Forward!”

Debrai, mouth agape and only just understanding what was happening, hurriedly moved to the side as the city Watch rode through the gate, followed immediately by the smaller force under Britomartis.

Chuang walked over to Debrai.

“Thank you, Wardmaster. At the present time we have no intention of entering your estate, but we would appreciate it if you would return there. It would be better if you stayed at home, I think.”

“I... Yes, Master Chuang!”

He scuttled off, presumably back to his estate.

Chuang walked through the gate after him. The troopers were already quite some distance, but Chuang knew he’d catch up soon enough... Poietes Liang Caihong’s estate was only a short distance away.

Behind him the costables took up positions at the gate. The other entrances to High City would all be closing, too, sealing it completely.

Captain Ragnarsson, backed by two dozen constables and a dozen raptors, walked to the gate of Poietes Liang’s estate. A single guardsman, dressed in beautiful silks but armed with only a dagger, nervously watched them approach.

“This is the estate of the Poietes Liang!” he called voice quavering. “What is your business?”

“I am on the Captain of the Guard, on the business of the King! Stand aside!” cried Ragnarsson, pushing past the bewildered man.

“Stop! You cannot...!”

One of the city Watch grabbed the man by the neck.

“Shut up,” he said, waving his sword in front of the man’s face. “Count your blessings that I don’t spit you where you stand.” He handed the frightened gateman off to one of Sergeant Wright’s men, who were now spreading out to seal the gates in the estate perimeter wall.

If the Poietes hadn’t known they were coming already, he certainly knew now.

His estate was another Roman-style domus, a wall surrounding the main building complex, with several wings and gardens. Normally the wall on such estates was fairly low, especially here in High City, but this one was about three meters tall.

Ragnarsson hammered on the massive wood door. “Open in the name of the King!”

He waited at least five seconds before waving the four men forward with the ram.

They swung it back and forth to build up inertia, and then slammed it into the door. It groaned, splintered, but held.

Again. And again.

The frame buckled on one side.

A fourth time to dislodge the doorframe from the wall, and a fifth to hammer the door fully open.

The path was clear.

Inside the doorway an open pathway led deeper inside, flanked by mortared walls and doorways on both sides.

“Jabari, clear both rooms,” commanded Ragnarsson.

“Bhavna, your triad sweep and clear the right room! Georgina’s triad, left room! Beth, stay here and be ready to assist. Larima and Ihala, with me,” shouted Jabari.

Her force split up, with three constables splitting off to each flanking room. The door to the room on the right was barred from the inside, but a few determined kicks and shoulders forced it open.

As soon as the opening was wide enough, Bhavna leapt through, crouching low and just slipping under a sword thrust from the darkness. She rolled, and swung her own sword in that direction. Behind her the other two followed closely..

A curse as her blade crashed into something metallic: she’d hit the other’s shinguard, but the impact was enough to make him stagger. She backed up to the far wall, rising to her feet with sword ready to defend as one of the other constables, Sajja, smashed her shield into the defender, knocking him backward off-balance.

“Yield or die!”

The man snarled, and caught himself with one foot against the far wall, turning with sword flashing to slice into Sajja’s shoulder as her own sword ran though his chest. Both dropped, and Bhavna stepped forward to administer the coup de grâce. He’d had his chance to surrender.

“Sajja! Hang on!”

The room was empty, but Sajja sat leaning against the wall, shoulder bleeding profusely.

“Sajja’s down! Aliza! Gimme a hand here!”

The third constable in their triad, Aliza, grabbed a nearby curtain and used her dagger to slice it into smaller pieces. They bound Sajja up quickly and efficiently and then moved to the next door.

“Beth!” called Bhavna. “Sajja’s hurt! Get Chuang in here!”

Beth ran in from the pathway to Sajja, and gave her a drink. “He’ll be here in a second, Saj. Hang on!”

From the other side of the pathway came Georgina’s shout: “Kitchen’s clear! We’re moving into the garden!”

Bhavna looked to Aliza, who nodded that she was ready, then yanked the door open.

Four sets of eyes looked up at her from the floor.

Children, the oldest not more than ten or so, stared at her with eyes wide and expressions frozen. She lowered her bloody sword a fraction.

“...children...”

She turned to Aliza.

“What the hell are we going to do with...” she began, when suddenly the children jumped up, daggers in hand, attacking both of them.

She screamed as a dagger plunged into her thigh from below, in the hands of a girl not more than five. Another dagger came flying toward her chest, held by the oldest boy.

She threw herself backwards, sword sweeping across the doorway in front of her.

Something scuttled across the floor toward her and she stabbed it blindly.

Aliza was cursing as she hacked at something again and again, her sword already dripping with blood.

Silence fell again.

Panting, Bhavna sat back down on the floor. She looked at what she just stabbed... it was a baby, perhaps old enough to crawl, she thought. It had long, pointed teeth.

“Aliza... you OK?”

“...yeah. Just a scratch. You?”

“Stabbed me in the leg. You got any more of that curtain?”

“Heh,” she snorted. “Plenty more where that came from.”

She tore another curtain down and ripped it into a makeshift bandage.

“Nothing like children to brighten your day, huh?”

“I don’t think these were children,” said Bhavna, pointing to the baby’s teeth. She cinched the bandage tight, grunting. “Wonder what else he’s got for us. Fucking noble.”

* * *

Ragnarsson walked down the pathway, trying to ignore the shouts and swordplay at his rear. That was Jabari’s problem; she’d handle it.

He had to find Liang.

Britomartis walked on his flank, twin scimitars glinting in the sunlight from overhead.

“Captain,” she called quietly, “Let the raptors flush them out.”

Ragnarsson stopped. He been approaching this as a straightforward private home, but after what Chuang and Britomartis had told him, he knew now it wasn’t. No need to play nice anymore.

He nodded.

Britomartis gave a piercing whistle and the raptors, already drooling with eagerness at the smell of blood, streaked forward into the depths of the domus in search of prey.

Reptilian shrieks were met with human shouts and then screams of pain. In tight spaces where a swordman lacked space to maneuver or swing freely, raptors had the edge. And a mouthful of long, serrated fangs.

A group of a dozen men and women were retreating into the garden, swords and spears flashing in the sunlight as they tried to fend off hissing raptors.

Two of the men knelt down at the garden wall; Captain Ragnarsson craned his neck as he tried to see what they were doing. Suddenly, a section of the wall collapsed and they spilled outside the estate, spearing an astonished Watch constable. There was a stable right in front of them.

A six stayed to defend the gap in the wall as the remaining few slipped into the stable.

“Damn it! Horses!” cried Ragnarsson.

“Sergeant Wright!” shouted Britomartis, leaping into the fray in spite of the blood-mad raptors to strike down one of the defenders. She pushed past the melee, racing toward the stables, but it was too late.

Four horses burst out through the stable doors, narrowly missing Britomartis. She leapt backwards out of their way, and swung her scimitar as she jumped. It hit.

The horse, hind leg cut deep, staggered, fell, throwing the rider off.

Britomartis rolled, recovered, stepped forward, scimitar pointing at the woman’s throat.

“Yield!”

The woman bared her teeth in fury and tried to swing her own sword.

Almost contemptuously Britomartis blocked it with one scimitar as she plunged the other deep into the other’s belly, then pulled it out in a spray of blood to knock the sword out of the dying woman’s hand.

It descended once more to chop into her neck, leaving her head half severed.

She sprinted to the stable, shouting for Sergeant Wright.

“Mount up! He’s on horse!”

She heard more shouts from the other side of the estate as she pushed the bar open and entered the horse’s stall. It was spooked and she was an unknown smell, but she leapt on its back anyway, and spurred it out of the stall and after Liang.

She couldn’t see Liang or his guard anymore, but she knew the direction they had headed, and there was only one place they could be going: the gate to the Avenue of Boreas, and then out of the city.

“They’re heading for the gate! Cut them off!”

She galloped after them, and as she turned the corner of the estate she caught a glimpse of them far ahead, racing headlong toward the Boreas Gate.

She could see Sergeant Ng and his troop hurriedly mounting their own horses, but there weren’t enough of them to hold the gate. Nobody had expected cavalry!

Liang and his two bodyguards bulled through with the force of their horses, cutting down the lone man in their way. Before he was felled, though, the constable managed to wound one of the horses, spearing it in the flank. It wasn’t a fatal wound but it would slow it down.

Britomartis reached the gate about the same time as Sergeant Ng and a few of his troopers did, and they galloped through together after Poietes Liang.

* * *

Captain Ragnarsson rested his sword on the paving stone, hands on the pommel, frowning.

The few survivors from Liang’s estate huddled in front of him, blindfolded, kneeling on the dirt of the open garden. There was one guard left, with a bloody bandage wrapped around his head—he’d been knocked unconscious by a shield boss and escaped most of the fight. Next to him to were half a dozen servants of both sexes, weeping or shocked into silence by the bloodshed.

“Chuang? What do you think?”

Chuang sighed.

“I’m sorry, Captain. The only way to tell is to watch them for the rest of their lives and see if they’ve been infected or not.”

“But they’re not attacking us!”

“True, but even the infected can still think and plot.”

“So you see no alternative?”

“None.”

The Captain shook his head.

He didn’t like what he had to do.

Jabari coughed.

“Captain? I’ll do it.”

“No, Sergeant. I can’t ask you to do that. This is my debt.”

He unsheathed his dagger and walked up to the wounded guard, pulling his head back by the hair and quickly slashing his throat. He ignored the blood that splashed onto his hand and walked to the next prisoner, a woman—probably the cook, he thought. Another slash. Another prisoner, and another, and another.

He stood, dagger in hand, and looked up at the clouds scudding across the sky.

Bent over, wiped the dagger on the tunic of the body in front of him.

Slammed the dagger home into its sheath.

“Sergeant Wright!”

“Yes sir!” responded Wright, looking into the garden from beyond the fallen wall.

“Send to Sergeant Rossi—the Alchemist will provide you with thalassion fire to torch the estate. I want nothing left but ash, and no stone standing. Sergeant Rossi and his men are to bring the Alchemist and the Chief Artificer to the cistern immediately.”

Ragnarsson turned back toward the others, waiting in the garden.

“To the cistern. Sergeant Jabari, call your people. It’s time to end this.”

He led them over the fallen wall toward the stone enclosure protecting the cistern as Sergeant Wright began moving wounded constables out of the estate to safety. The four surviving raptors had already been recalled and were securely roped to some trees nearby.

The cistern was mostly underground.

The Captain signaled to surround the area. He turned to see the Chief Artificer Marcus approaching, still protected by a dozen constables under Sergeant Rossi.

“Where is the Alchemist?”

“Ihejirika will be along in a moment, just as soon as the domus is blazing,” said Marcus. “That thalassion fire is nasty stuff!”

“Which stones do we need to lift?”

Marcus pointed. “See the double circle there? That marks an opening. There are four in all.”

“All right, everyone. Listen up!” trumpeted Captain Ragnarsson. “We have a pretty good idea of what’s down there, and it’s probably awake. Think poisonous snakes and keep your wits about you! If you’re bitten, you’re dead. Just like those poor servants.

“Jabari! Rossi! Get those stones open!

The sergeants split their constables into teams and began prying up the paving stones, standing as far back from the openings as they could and still get leverage.

The stench of rotting meat filled the air and as a paving stone fell open, one of the women stumbled back, retching and rubbing her eyes.

Another paving stone lifted and slid to the side to leave the opening half open, a black semicircle, and suddenly a grayish-white tentacle whipped out to grasp a man, wrapping around his leg and yanking him back into the hole.

He screamed and caught himself on the edges, arms outstretched, seeking help. The other constables working on the paving stone with him jumped forward, grasping his arms and pulling.

He screamed, and with a terrible, wet sound pulled free—his right leg missing from the thigh down, blood spurting and he screamed in agony.

Another man at a different opening cursed and fell back, sword slashing down to sever a seeking tentacle, and then people began climbing up out of the openings—many, many people.

As dozens of men, women, and children emerged from the underground cistern, the Watch fell back, using spears and bows to hold them off, or swords when they got too close. The attackers were unarmed, for the most part, and all a grayish-green in color. Silent, they moved with surprising speed to the attack, biting and clawing without any attempt to protect themselves. A few small children were able to duck under or around the constables’ defense, but unarmed and facing armed and armored warriors they were doomed from the start.

Tentacles waved from the openings, seeking unwary targets but unable to reach them.

“Get back!” came shout from behind, and a small jar arced forward to fall into the closest hole, leaving a trail of smoke in the air behind it.

A muffled whomp sounded from underground as the thalassion fire ignited. The Alchemist and her assistant lobbed jars into all the openings and flames and smoke began shooting up into the sky.

Alchemist Ihejirika pulled her assistant, a young black man, farther back from the flames and watched the black smoke billow up.

“Nasty stuff,” she mused. “Naphtha.”

She turned to Captain Ragnarsson. Her dark skin was dirty with ash, beads of sweat glistening in the ruddy sunlight that filter through the billowing smoke. A large, delicate fragment of ash wafted down to land on one of her braids; she brushed it off impatiently. The ash lay white on her dark hair, but black on Ragnarsson’s own blond braids.

“Whatever was down there, it’s very, very dead,” she said.

“Master Chuang, may I leave this to you?”

Chuang nodded. “Ihejirika and I have it well in hand, I believe. Go!”

The Captain nodded his thanks.

“Sergeant Rossi! You’re in overall command here, including the King’s Guards. Get all those things into the cistern and burn them. Or build a pyre here, but make sure there’s nothing left but ashes!”

“Yessir!”

“Sergeant Jabari, get those horses over here. We have to catch up to Liang!”

* * *

Their morning shopping complete, Mistress Kileesh left the noises and smells of the farm market and stepped onto the Avenue of Boreas. It was busy as always, people and carts with business in the markets, or just moving along the avenue through the city. As the farm market was in the Circe’s Cirque, the outermost ring of the city, they would have to walk a few ten twelves of meters toward the Pinnacle to reach the Boreas Gate to Skala Eresou.

Suddenly, three horses burst out into the avenue from High City, scattering passers-by and toppling a cart full of melons.

“Out of the way! Make way! Make way!” they shouted, swinging their swords at hapless people who couldn’t move fast enough.

The avenue turned into a chaotic mess of people, horses and carts as the confusion spread, nobody sure of what was happening, but trying to flee at the sound of swordplay.

Pursuing horses following quickly, this time carrying warriors in the garb of the Guard.

“Halt! Halt in the name of the King!”

The first three men, stymied by the crush of people and animals, realized they couldn’t escape their pursuers easily. The man in the middle, muscular, with short-clipped salt-and-pepper hair and wearing expensive silks, reached down and grabbed Rogier by the arm, yanking him up to sit in front of him on the horse. He tore the boy’s pack off, mackerel and all, and threw it to the ground.

“Take the children hostage!” he shouted. “The Guard won’t kill innocent children!”

The other two men tried to capture their own hostages; one succeeded, picking up a flailing Opal and draping her sideways over the horse’s neck, the other man grabbed Ri Torshell but she twisted away, ducked and rolled to safety.

The pursuers galloped closer, revealing Britomartis and several city constables.

“Surrender, Liang! Surrender in the name of the King!”

“Let us go, Britomartis, and the children live!” came his reply.

The horses were moving slower now as the pursued and their hostages continued toward the gate to the outside fields, through the Wall of Thalia. The road was mostly empty now, but the three men had to defend themselves against their pursuers while controlling the hostages.

Britomartis drew her bow and shot at the third man, the one who had been unable to take a student hostage, striking him in the upper shoulder close to the neck. He screamed, hand on the arrow, and began to lean forward in the saddle, slumping over the horse’s neck. His horse began to drift in a different direction from the other two as he dropped the reins and finally slipped off to fall to the ground.

“Back, Britomartis, or the children die!”

“Surrender, Liang. You have no chance!”

Rogier, who had been sitting still in front of Liang, suddenly reached out and up, and without turning or hesitating, plunged his dagger into his captor’s eye. Liang screamed, convulsed, and toppled to the ground.

“Poietes Liang!”

The remaining man shouted in fear and anger, and plunged his own dagger into Opal’s back, throwing her limp body to the ground and spurring his horse, hoping to escape through speed alone.

Sergeant Ng, riding in from his blind side, chopped him in the neck, and watched as his horse carried him another ten twelves of meters toward the gate before he slipped off to lie in the dust.

Sergeant Ng slowly rode over to where Rogier sat on Liang’s horse.

“So, Roach, it seems you and I are fated to meet once more after all.”

Rogier just cocked his head, expression blank.

“My name is Rogier.”

“Rogier or Roach, you’ve killed a noble, and you’re to pay for it. Off the horse, boy!”

He dismounted quietly and stood waiting.

Britomartis rode up.

“Rogier, I will stand for you, for you acted in self-defense, but you must submit for now.”

“Hold it right there!” cried Mistress Kileesh, pushing past the Watch horses to stand between Britomartis and Rogier. “Rogier was defending himself! He did nothing wrong!”

Britomartis dismounted and walked up to face Kileesh.

“I’m sorry, but the law is clear,” she said. “I agree he acted in self-defense, but the King must decide his fate.”

“The King!? And who are you to be demanding such? You’re not the Watch!”

“No, I am no constable. I am Britomartis, Commander of the King’s Guard, and this is a matter of treason, and will be dealt with as such. I will stand for Rogier until the King’s judgment, and render truth in the telling of the matter.”

“Britomartis? I...” Kileesh fell quiet, mumbling the rest of her apology to herself, bowing as she retreated to straighten Opal’s bloody corpse. The other student, Ri Torshell, was still huddled against the wall, tears coursing down her face as she watched, wide-eyed.

Britomartis held out her hand to Sergeant Ng.

“Rope, please, Sergeant.”

Ng straightened up, and took a binding rope from his horse’s saddlebag.

“Shall I...?”

“No, I’ll do it,” replied Britomartis, taking the rope and walking to face Rogier. “I will stand for you, Rogier, but you must submit. It is the law.”

He silently held out his hands as she bound them, holding the end of the rope herself.

She lifted him up onto her horse.

“Captain Ragnarsson, may I ask you to clean this up? Those two,” she said, pointing to Liang’s fallen men, “are to be cremated immediately. Send a constable to ask Master Chuang what to do with Liang’s body.”

She snapped her reins.

“I’m taking the boy to The Pinnacle.”

>* * *

“Sergeant, all those women and children... the Captain just slaughtered them...”

The woman, a veteran with almost two decades of experience in the Watch, stood watching the foul smoke from the cistern. She made no effort to help carry the bodies to the conflagration.

Sergeant Rossi spat into the flames.

Captain Ragnarsson

“They looked like people, but they weren’t. Not anymore.”

He turned, searching for someone.

“Bhavna!” He called, summoning her over. “Everyone else, stop what you’re doing and come here a minute.”

She limped up, and he pointed to the pile of bodies waiting to be fed into the fire.

“Which ones were the children who attacked you?”

“There, Sergeant. The two on the right for sure; can’t see the others.”

Rossi walked over to the bodies she pointed to, and kicked the smallest one—a baby—out into the open.

“You all don’t like the idea of killing women and children. I get that,” he said, and held out his hand to a nearby trooper. “Lend me your axe for a minute.”

The man handed over his axe, and without a word Rossi swung it down and through the baby’s skull, slicing it neatly open.

There was little blood.

And no brains at all... the inside of the baby’s skull was full of a spongy, greenish gray blob, a smooth bubble that looked like the belly of a dead fish—or the cap of a mushroom.

“This is not a baby. It probably never was human, but now it’s just a part of that thing underground, one of its fingers. Worse than a Honeysucker, this is the spawn of the Goddess Herself. For years we have been destroying the Honey of the Goddess, but this is what those evil things really are: eggs to spawn monsters like these!”

The constables shuffled their feet, muttering to themselves, and returned to the pile of bodies, now more hesitant to touch them than feed them to the flames.

Chapter 10

The Palace was unusually crowded. In addition to the King and Chuang, Commander Britomartis and Captain Ragnarsson of the Watch stood nearby. Sergeant Ng and Sergeant Jabari stood farther back.

The Chief Artificer, Marcus, stood on one side, next to the Alchemist, their assistants behind them.

“So, Marcus, now that the cistern and tunnels have been properly ‘cleaned,’ you’re confident this thing is dead?”

“Yes, my lord,” replied Marcus. “Thanks to the assistance of Alchemist Ihejirika, they are very clean indeed. And I have instituted a new inspection regimen that should make this sort of problem unlikely in the future.”

“Thank you, Marcus,” nodded the King. “We know that Liang was behind this infestation, but whether he planted the thing here himself or was merely ensnared by it, we will never know.

“How were the honeydrops transported to Skala Eresou?”

“Sergeant Jabari?” invited the Chief Artificer.

She stepped forward.

“A surprisingly simple contrivance, my lord... they merely loaded the honeydrops into a bag, tied it to a rope, and let the current carry it downstream until it could be pulled out again by de la Corda. After she removed the drugs they just pulled it back to Liang’s estate again, until it was time for the next delivery.”

“No swimmers, no gnorri, just a bag and a rope.”

“Yes, my lord. Most simple and most effective.”

“Thank you.”

The Chief Artificer summoned his assistant forward. He was carrying a wooden box.

“My lord, we recovered these. Eleven twelves and four, to be exact.”

He opened the box to reveal a gleaming mass of honeydrops.

The King laughed. “A King’s ransom indeed! Chuang?”

“Burn them, of course.”

“Britomartis, dispose of them,” ordered the King.

She stepped forward and took the box, closing it to hold under her arm.

“Thank you, Marcus, and Ihejirika. You have rendered the city great service this day.”

He rose from his throne and walked up to them, handing them each a small bag.

“A token of my appreciation,” he said, and shook hands wrist-grip style with each of them.

After he sat down, he turned to Britomartis.

“I believe young Liang is next?”

“Yes, my lord,” replied Britomartis, and motioned to one of her guards, who left for a minute to return leading a young man.

“Liang Weiyuan, my lord,” he introduced himself, kneeling.

“Rise, Liang Weiyuan,” said the King, motioning with his hand. “You are aware of your father’s crime?”

“I am, my lord.”

“Liang was stripped of his rank when he committed treason, and has paid the price for it. Were you aware of his plot?”

“No, my lord, I was not. I have been in Lhosk for six years now, with little communication with my father.”

“So it seems,” nodded the King. He looked up. “Mistress? Is this true?”

A kimono-clad woman stepped out from the shadows behind the King. Mochizuki.

“Yes, my King. He speaks truth.”

The King looked back to the boy, still kneeling.

“Your father’s estate and wealth are yours, but your father’s title died with him. You are nobility no more.”

“Thank you, my lord.”

“You may leave, Liang Weiyuan.”

He did.

“We must also decide the fate of Liang’s killer, my lord,” said Britomartis.

“I know,” said the King. “The law is clear, but the boy is not at fault nonetheless.”

“No, my lord. It is the King’s decision, however.”

“Bring him in.”

Britomartis signaled her aide again, and Rogier entered, hands tied together with a ceremonial cord.

“You are Rogier, also known as Roach, formerly of the farm market and most recently a student at Poietria Martine’s school?”

“Yes,” replied Rogier, voice as blank as his expression.

“My King, may I question the boy?” asked Mochizuki unexpectedly.

He cocked his head.

“Mistress? Of course, if you wish...”

She turned to Rogier.

“Is it Rogier, or Roach?”

“Rogier, Mistress,” he replied, looking at her with curiosity. “Or Roach.”

“If you had waited, the Commander probably could have ended things without killing. Opal could still be alive.”

Rogier stood, silent.

“Why did you kill Poietes Liang?”

“He gave me an opening.”

“And Opal?”

Rogier shrugged.

“You are not sad that Opal is dead?”

“We all die. She died today.”

Mochizuki turned back to King.

“My king, with your permission I would take this boy myself.”

The King frowned.

“That’s most unusual, Mistress.” He thought for a moment. “You do have a Writ and can use it to take the boy, of course, but then again I wrote that Writ myself and can certainly deny it... Do you stand for the boy?”

“I do, my king.”

“You’ll remove him from Celephaïs?”

“Yes, my king. He will be to Farlaway, until he is ready,” answered Mochizuki. “

Farlaway. Britomartis had never been there, but it was infamous. A village said to be somewhere in the mountains east of Celephaïs, between the Tanarian Hills and Utnar Vehi, it was where Mochizuki’s feared assassins came from. With his skill and coldness the boy would make a most potent weapon in her hands, if he survived.

“So be it,” said the King.

The audience was over.

END

Thibby bent over until his cheek touched the dirt, carefully checking the alignment of his thumb and the red marble. With his left hand he reached out and pushed a tiny fragment of something out of the way, then lifted his head again.

He straightened up, steadied himself with his left hand and both knees, and took the shot.

The yellowish marble flew out of his hand and clacked into the larger red, knocking it off at a tangent before to the ground and bouncing to a stop.

“Yes!” he shouted, both arms up in the air in celebration and all but one of the other children joined in. Odd man out was Ken, brows beetling, lips slightly pouting: he had just lost Big Red, his favorite marble.

Thibby picked up both marbles, the last two in the circle, and rattled them together in his hand for a moment, savoring his victory. This was his first win at their daily marbles competition in almost two weeks and he was loving every minute of it.

He opened his hand, picked up his yellowish shooter, and dropped it into his bag instead of adding it to the pile of marbles in front of him on the ground.

“Here’s Big Red back, Ken,” he said, holding out the other’s prize marble. “You’ll beat me again tomorrow like always.”

He pushed his pile of winnings into the circle.

“Thanks, guys, for the win. Take ’em all back.”

The other children—Ken and two other boys, and two girls—eagerly snatched back their own marbles, quickly settling one argument about who one common stone belonged to.

Mother Egret watched, quietly sitting in the shade of the giant oak. They met here almost every day, on the paving stones around the fountain when the weather was good, or under the broad branches of the oak when not. They’d played once in the public bath across the street, until they got chased out.

Mother Egret was always there, always with a gentle smile. She had a walking stick leaning against the rock she sat upon but nobody could recall her using it. In fact, as it occurred to them every so often, nobody had actually seen her walk at all.

They’d brought it up any number of times, determined to watch and see where she went, where she lived, who she really was, but every time they seemed to forget about it, only recalling their intentions after they were on the way home, or later that evening. It never seemed that important, after all.

Mother Egret never raised her voice, although when she told them stories her voice could reach the far reaches of the plaza easily. She enthralled her young audience with tales of kings and dragons, of buried treasure and cursed gems, of the heroes of the past and the future, almost every day after schola.

She could bring a smile to the saddest face, and kiss away the pain of a scraped knee.

Children began to leave, heading for home and their chores—most of them came from poorer families, and had to help with the family business, or even go to work for others.

He exchanged a few quips with his friends and turned to go home himself when he noticed Mother Egret beckoning him.

“Thibron, you were very kind to let everyone keep their own today.”

He smiled, white teeth bright though his sun-burnt complexion.

“Thank you, Mother Egret.”

She smiled back, nodding a few times, then reached out to touch him lightly on the head.

“Run along now, Thibron. I’ll see you soon.”

Thibby was smiling all the way home at his victory. He knew he could have kept all the marbles—some of the kids did that and got everyone all angry all the time—but he hated it when everyone got angry at him. Sometimes there were even fistfights when a kid couldn’t bear losing a precious marble in combat.

As he got closer to home, though, his smile slipped.

He slowed down, walking quietly and listening intently for his father.

No banging, no shouting, no crying… in fact, as he got closer, he could hear his mother humming.

The smile came back and he rushed inside the give her a hug from behind.

“Careful! You almost knocked the ladle out of my hand, you rascal,” she scolded with a smile, tousling his hair with her free hand.

“Run along and wash up now, and I’ll get you fed.”

“Yes, mama,” he said, and scampered off.

He ate alone, as always, although his mother sat across from him, watching with a slight smile as he devoured his soup and rice.

He scarfed down two bowls of rice and looked hopefully at the pot for a third, but his mother shook her head.

“I’m sorry, Thibron, that’s for your father.”

Crestfallen but not surprised, he picked up his bowl, cup and spoon and started to walk toward the open door, toward the running stream where he could wash them.

There was a bang at the front door as it was flung open, slamming into the wall.

Father was home!

“Quickly, Thibron, off with you! I’ll wash up later. Go!”

He set the utensils down and ran to the closet that was his bedroom. He pulled the sliding door shut, quietly of course, leaving it open just the merest crack so he could see into the larger room. It was the only room they had, the living, dining, kitchen, and master bedroom all in one, and often all at once.

Bare to the waist, belly bulging out over the filthy dhoti, his father looked even angrier than usual, his stubbled jowls pulled back to reveal yellowing teeth.

He paused for a moment to let his eyes adjust to the relative darkness of the apartment, then took a step toward the cushions spread out along the far wall.

“Ah! Ow! Gods dammit, what the..?”

He hopped up on one leg, then stepped back a bit to stand and reach down to pick something up.

His bag of marbles!

“Your damned boy leaving his damned toys about! Stupid bitch, can’t you keep things clean?”

He smashed the bag against the stone wall.

Thibron heard a marble shatter, maybe more than one.

He clenched his fists in anger and fear, one pushing against his teeth to stop himself from crying out.

“Denh, please… he’s just a little boy…” the woman pled, dropping to her knees.

He swung the bag of marbles with all his force, hitting her on the side of her face, toppling her to the floor. She screamed in pain and terror, barely catching herself with one hand, trying to scuttle backwards, her feet scrabbling uselessly on the stone.

“I’m sorry, Denh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”

What began as a whimper grew suddenly into a scream as he grabbed her by the hair, dragging her forward like a bad puppy, holding her head facing up and he struck her again and again with his fist.

“I’ll teach you to be sorry, you bitch!”

Thibron burst out of his closet, leaping across the room to grab hold of his father’s arm, pulling on it with all his strength.

“Papa, no, please! Please don’t hit her anymore! Papa!”

“Leggo, you brat!”

With a snarl his father snapped that arm up, sending Thibron flying to crunch into the wall.

He felt something in his arm snap, and then something hit him in the side and his world collapsed into pain and fire.

Dimly he heard his mother screaming, and the sound of something hard being pounded into flesh, then heavy breathing in silence, and darkness.

* * *

“Thibron.”

He heard the voice clearly, although it was faint.

“Mama?”

“It’s time to go, Thibron. Come to me, child; your mother is waiting.”

It was Mother Egret!

Mother Egret was here, in his home.

But it was so dark.

He couldn’t see Mother Egret at all. Or mama.

“Mama? Where are you?”

He stood, squinting into the black, searching.

“Over here, child,” came Mother Egret voice, and he turned to see her seated by a wood door dimly lit by some indistinct illumination.

“Mother Egret? Where is mama?”

He walked toward her, noticing that his body didn’t hurt anymore.

“You’ve been very brave, dear Thibron,” she said, leaning forward to give him a hug, squeezing him tight for a moment. “Your mother is right through that door; she’s waiting for you.”

The door wasn’t scary at all.

It was pretty, with little carvings of birds and flowers all over it, and perfectly child-sized; just high enough for him to walk through.

“Just push it open, Thibron, and you’ll see. Before you go, though, you won’t need this anymore,” she said, and reached out to pluck something from his chest.

He couldn’t see exactly what it was… something small, something glowing gold, like a marble.

Mother Egret gave him a gentle push on the shoulder.

He pressed on the door and it swung open easily.

Sunlight spilled into the darkness on a playful breeze, rich with the scents of flowers and children laughing.

He blinked.

There she was! Mama!

He leapt through the door, racing into the waiting arms of his mother, her face radiant and unlined with the beauty of a dream.

Mother Egret watched silently as the wood door swung shut slowly, silently, and sighed.

She looked down at the glowing gem in her hand.

“I’m sorry, dear Thibron. Would that it were him instead of you,” she whispered to herself as the soulstone turned to mist and faded away with the light, leaving only darkness behind.

END

Bortras wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his arm, the clean one. Over the years he’d learned how to keep one section of one forearm relatively dry and clean, especially for that purpose, even though the rest of him was usually wet and covered in filth.

He no longer bothered with the cloth mask around his mouth and nose anymore… he’d gotten used to the stench of the tunnels of Celephaïs years ago.

He took another step in the muck, his feet automatically seeking stable bottom, his arms automatically pulling the rake back and forth, cleaning detritus from the huge grating. Forged of steel bars, each as thick as two fingers, the whole was far too heavy for any man to move, let alone lift.

The noon sun didn’t penetrate far into the tunnel today, and while he wouldn’t have minded a little sunshine to lighten his mood, it would have meant he’d be a lot hotter while he worked. And a lot smellier as the muck warmed.

He didn’t have to clean this grate too often, but as the final barrier between the sewers of the city and the churning waves of the Cerenarian Sea below, it was critical to the whole sewerage network that underlay the city.

Seven years already, he thought. Seven years of working in the darkness, buried in the garbage and the excrement of the teeming city above. Only meagre lamps and torches to illuminate the labyrinth of tunnels and caverns, light that rarely penetrated far enough into the murky water to reveal what caused those ripples and splashes in the darkness.

He’d really wanted to work on the city’s defenses: the walls, the scorpions, the gates. He knew how to build all the machines of war, how to reinforce tunnels dug under the walls by sappers and how to defend against them, how to anchor a ballistae to withstand the stress of multiple shots.

And he’d been working in water and shit for seven long years.

The north end of the city, where the waters of the River Naraxa were first drawn in, was clean and pristine, pools and streams almost glowing under the lamps ensconced around the walls. The air was clean there, too, just the smells of water and rock and lamp oil.

There, the boats could travel freely through spacious tunnels, often with towpaths alongside broad enough for even horses. With a map, an artificer could traverse the city underground, whether into the farm markets, High City and its noble houses, even Skala Eresou itself, forbidden to most males.

He’d ventured to Skala Eresou once, just for the thrill, and found the grates there locked securely. No doubt Chief Artificer Marcus had the keys.

The water was flowing more freely now.

He raked one more time to pull out a long thin pole that had somehow managed to be washed down here, and checked once more to be sure he hadn’t missed anything.

Years ago he’d been so disgusted with the stench and the never-ending boredom and had abandoned his work before it was complete—and on that day, of all days, Artificer Krunogle had come to check.

He’d been dragged up in front of the Chief himself, and if Krunogle hadn’t said he was worth giving another chance, the Chief would have drummed him out on the spot. As it was he’d only gotten three strokes of the cane, and he was pretty sure Krunogle had held back.

His back had hurt for a few days after, and he had thought of just quitting, but he’d promised he’d see it through. Pa had made him promise to stick it out until he finished his apprenticeship, and swore it would be worth it if he could only reach journeyman.

As a boy Pa had told him endless stories about the work he’d done for the King, both here in Celephaïs and all over the eastern continent. He’d even worked on Serannian, the King’s flying palace!

He shook his head as he dumped the last load of brush and garbage into the scow. The mule twitched its tail once at the spray of droplets across its nose but otherwise just continued standing there, ignoring him as it always did.

He’d expected to be working on erecting castles, buildings, and machines of war, drafting exciting new designs to awe everyone with his talent. Not this, not raking muck all day.

As luck would have it, he was assigned to the underground network that supplied water to the city and swept away its waste, dumping it into the Cerenarian Sea. The outlets, including the grate he’d just finished cleaning, were situated to the north of the city seadocks, taking advantage of the current sweeping northward to carry it all away from the city, ever northward toward Inganok, or the Northern Marshes off Lomar.

His apprenticeship should be over soon, and as soon as he was a journeyman he’d be out of these tunnels and up in the clean, fresh air as soon as he could. He couldn’t wait to start working on real projects, not just shoveling shit.

He swatted the mule on the flank and it began to trudge back upstream, pulling the loaded scow slowly but steadily away from the gate. The landing was only a few dozen meters away, and when they reached it he moored the scow to one of the posts. A second tunnel, almost as big as the one he was in, joined his tunnel here, and there was a ladder down from the street above, one of the several entrances in the fish market. Somebody else would be along tomorrow to get rid of it all.

They had to be careful of the weather, since even a mild rain could cause these tunnels to turn into raging torrents, sweeping any incautious artificer to their death. The scow would have to be stowed way safely, too, until next time.

He didn’t plan on being here by then.

He hesitated.

If he had been alone he could climb up and go back through the fish market, now that the grate was clean. The stench of the fish market was, in a way, even worse than the stench down here, though… he’d grown accustomed to this smell, and while he certainly didn’t enjoy it he usually didn’t even notice it anymore. Rotting fish, on the other hand, he definitely hated.

He had to take care of the mule, too, and so they slowly walked back through one of the smaller tunnels that ran almost under the Wall of Euphrosyne, handling mostly water from the public baths and fountains. Unlike the loathsome inhabitants of the sewers, those tunnels were home to more innocuous denizens: frogs, fish, and the like. And the towpath was dry almost the entire distance, with torches at hand.

Much happier at the different smells in the smaller tunnel, the mule even took advantage of the improved water quality to snap up a few stalks of grass every so often as a snack.

They approached the north end of the city, where the waters of Naraxa entered the tunnel system. The mule lived in the stables there when it wasn’t working, along with its fellows, with plenty of fodder and fresh water. The artificers had their own bath there, too, with its own hot spring feeding it!

Many of the city’s artificers, and all of the apprentices, lived in the barracks aboveground, at the north end of the farm market, close to the Avenue of Boreas. Once he became a journeyman he’d be able to live elsewhere, if he wished, even marry, although he hadn’t really thought that far yet.

He’d been paying little attention as he walked, familiar with every bend and stone of the tunnel after years of use, but suddenly something caught his eye.

A light was moving down one of the unused tunnels.

That particular tunnel was, as he recalled, entirely unused. He’d never entered it, and his map showed it as a dead-end extending toward the adamant upthrust of the Pinnacle. Offhand he couldn’t recall if that was one of the tunnels that had a branch extending down, deeper into the water, but he thought it might have been. There were a number of such submerged tunnels scattered about under the city, leading deeper into the watery depths, but he’d never heard of anyone venturing into them.

He could see a light moving slowly, bobbing slightly as if a carried torch.

The mule could get home by itself, he thought. It knew the way better than he did, no doubt. He needed to see just what was happening down there, and raise the alarm if necessary. He’d been warned countless times that these tunnels were off-limits to everyone without the King’s permission—which they had—and if they spotted an intruder to report it at once.

He dropped the rope and hesitated for a moment as the mule continued to shamble away into the darkness, leaving the circle of light cast by his lamp.

Bortras adjusted the brightness of his lamp, twisting the thumbscrew to lower the wick until it was a dull glow, barely illuminating the towpath.

He retraced his footsteps back to the prior bridge—a row of simple wooden slats nailed to beams—and crossed over to the other side.

He walked slowly and quietly, holding the lamp low to check his footing and also make it harder for anyone to see him coming.

He reached the corner and peered around.

Yes, the lights—there were three of them now, it looked like—were still there, and still moving a little. He thought maybe one of them might be in a boat, judging from the way it seemed to bob up and down.

He moved a foot around the corner, and stopped when his boot touched something.

He could barely make it out in the dim lamp light.

A cloth bag.

He knelt down to look inside, and pulled it toward himself, only to discover that it was surprisingly heavy.

He opened the top and lifted his lamp up a bit to see better.

Gold. Dozens, maybe hundreds, of gold tiaras. More than he’d made in seven years of working these tunnels, more than enough to live well outside the city.

He blinked.

A fine house in the country, a wife, family… he could have it all.

The faint echo of voices from the tunnel brought him back, and he hurriedly pulled the drawstring closed.

He pulled the bag back around the corner, out of sight from the mysterious intruders, and turned to walk back toward the nearest ladder.

It was only a short distance, and now that he was safely out of sight he could turn his lamp back up. He raised the wick and quickened his pace.

The ladder was of wood, old but well maintained. There was a faint light seeping in from above, so he could extinguish the lamp and set it on the nearby shelf.

Holding the bag with one hand, he climbed with the other, and quickly reached the stone-walled room at the top. The door could only be opened from the inside, thanks to a complex mechanism. Someone could knock a hole in the wall, of course, but the idea was that it would make enough noise to attract the Watch.

The strategy had worked for centuries already, in spite of a few attempts.

Except maybe for tonight… who were they? What were they doing in the tunnels? And where did this money come from?

He opened the door and stepped out into the street.

He was standing across the street from a merchant selling vegetables of all sorts, with a carload of carrots being unloaded.

“Hey, Bortras! All done for the day?”

He spun around to see one of the older men he’d worked with, Artificer Framo of Cornwall. He looked to be shopping, with a basket of produce in one hand, munching on an apple.

“Ah… yeah, hi, Artificer Framo,” he stammered. “Finished with the bottom grate, all done. Got a few things to pick up myself.”

“Might want to wash some of that muck off first.”

Bortras laughed.

“Yeah, maybe I should’ve. Bit busy tonight, didn’t think I had the time.”

“Hot date?”

“Uh, yeah. Gotta get a few things ready, and then clean up,” he agreed.

“Good luck to you, Bortras!”

“Thanks. See ya tomorrow,” he answered and waved goodbye, turning into a convenient alley to escape the conversation as quickly as possible.

He trotted down the alley and turned the corner onto the Avenue of Boreas. The Gate of Calaïs was a stone’s throw away, offering a glimpse of the fields outside the city walls. It was open to the daily traffic, the constables perfunctorily checking carts and wagonloads.

He could be outside Celephaïs and on his way to years of ease in only minutes.

Bortras laughed, and turned away to enter an older, weather-worn building.

He shouted even before his eyes adjusted to the dimness of the interior.

“Intruders in the tunnels! At least three, I think, with a boat!”

“We know, Artificer Bortras, we know,” came a quiet voice.

Artificer Krunogle.

As his eyes began to make out shapes in the darkness, he saw dozens of men and women surrounding him, standing silently.

“They dropped a bag of gold on the towpath,” he explained, holding it out, then spun around in confusion. “Wha…? Why don’t you…?”

Krunogle stepped forward, placing his hand on his shoulder.

“Artificer Bortras, you have done well.”

He stepped back as another figure stepped forward to take his place.

Chief Artificer Marcus!

“Artificer Framo, how do you say?”

“He did not take any of the gold, and came here directly. He is worthy.”

“Artificer Krunogle, how do you say?”

“He has completed his tasks with skill and responsibility, as an Artificer of Celephaïs should,” said Krunogle. “He is worthy.”

“Does anyone have reason to doubt this man?”

There was silence from the assembled crowd.

“Artificer Bortras,” continued Marcus, “I hereby certify that you have completed your apprenticeship, and proven that you are a man to be trusted. You are now a journeyman, and, if you wish, free to leave the tunnels of Celephaïs behind.”

He could escape those damned tunnels! And work outside, in the clean air!

“I… I did it!” he gasped in shock, then shook himself. “Thank you, Artificer Marcus! Thank you!”

Marcus held out his hand, and Bortras reached to grasp it before stopping.

“My hand… it’s filthy.”

Marcus shook it anyway.

“You’re one of us now, Artificer Bortras.”

At that signal the whole crowd erupted into cheers and laughter, his friends pushing forward to clap him on the back or shake his hand. A key of ale appeared from somewhere and suddenly the oil lamps were lit and three people in aprons wheeled in an enormous haunch of roast buopoth, followed by a tableful of vegetables and fruit.

A panpipe started hooting in one corner of the room, almost drowned out by the noise.

“But what should I do with all this gold,” he asked Krunogle.

“Things you find in the tunnels are yours to keep.”

“There are no intruders down there?”

“No intruders. Just some of us testing you, and you passed with flying colors.”

He hefted the bag again.

“That’s a lot of gold…”

“Heh. Don’t worry, only the dozen or so on top are real… the rest is all skelfs; not enough to buy a meal with.”

Someone pushed a mug of ale into his hand.

So he couldn’t have lived happily ever after anyway. Whatever.

He was a journeyman now!

END

Klar always wanted to be a Dreamer.

Ever since he was a little boy he would focus on an ant, a leaf, a pebble, willing it to change into something else. At night before he slept he would stare into the darkness, willing a light to shine, or a sword.

Nothing ever came of it, except getting swatted on the head a few times for daydreaming, but he never lost that secret wish.

He thought of it once again as he rubbed his shoulder, that hand on the haft of his shovel as he caught his breath.

The sun was slipping westward, already close to the soaring minarets of Celephaïs, shadows creeping longer and longer.

It’d been a hard day—weren’t they all?—but the field was all done, plowed and seeded, and the packed dirt walls of the perimeter drainage ditch study enough to handle the coming rains.

The soil was good this year, a rich brown pungent with the scent of fresh life.

He could almost feel the seed corn wriggling with delight, bursting into explosive growth.

“It’ll be a bumper crop this year, Clyde,” he predicted, but the deino merely kept chewing its cud.

Clyde wasn’t the brightest deino he’d ever met, but he never complained and he kept that plow moving all day come rain or shine.

He patted the deino on the neck, receiving a head-butt in return, and unhitched it from the mouldboard plow. The plow was too heavy for him to lift by himself, but it was balanced so that the force of his arms would lift the pointed prow out of the soil and place most of the weight on the rear wheels.

It took practice, but practice he’d had: decades of it.

He looked over at Chek, his second son, and saw that he had already finished his plot and was scraping mud off the plow. Looked like Chek had finished a little before he had.

“Everything OK?”

“No problem, pa,” came the response. “Just cleaning it up a little… big patch of mud in the middle—damned heavy, too.”

Klar chuckled.

“Why do you think I offered to let you take the cooler plot, in all that nice shade?”

“Hey, apologize to Barrol, not me! He did all the heavy work.”

Barrol was their other deino, and now stood placidly chewing something, all four legs covered in drying mud. It wouldn’t bother him, of course, and that was hardly enough weight for him to even notice, but they’d just as soon not track all that mud into the barn if they could help it.

He whistled to Brute, their enormous wolfhound, who rose from where he’d been lazing in the shade to stretch and yawn. Brute snoozed most of the time, but Klar knew he always slept with one eye open, and woe to any fox that came after their chickens.

Brute’s mate, Boka, was back at the house with a boxful of puppies, one or two of which he’d be keeping for Brute to train… the dog was getting old.

The plows were stored safe in the shed a few minutes later, and they started the walk home. There was no worry about hurting the crop since they’d only plowed and seeded today, and it was far easier to just walk across the fields than take the balks. That’d change once the shoots popped up, of course.

The city was mostly in shadow now, black against the setting sun, but the orange light still illuminated the forest on the other side of his fields. The Tanarian Hills started here, just the first foothills, too hilly and rocky for cultivation but covered in verdant forest.

He’d cut these fields out of the wilderness himself, he and his family—his wife Myrn, and later his sons Brytos and Chek and daughter Kyrantha. It had been hard, those first years when he and Myrn were here alone, and later when the baby came… but they’d persevered.

He glanced at the trees once again. The sunlight was strange, somehow. The sunset looked normal, puffy clouds all lit up in orange, but the trees looked… different.

“Somethin’ funny with the light,” he commented offhand, but Chek just gave the trees a glance and shrugged.

“Doesn’t look strange to me,” he said. “The sunset, maybe?”

Klar grunted and kept walking until he could close the paddock gate behind the deinos. Clyde and Barrol stuck their heads deep into the water trough, slurping it up.

Myrn and Kyrantha would be putting the chickens back in the henhouse for the evening, or already inside making dinner.

It was just the four of them now that Brytos was in the Watch.

He was proud that the boy had become a constable. He was a strapping youth, and quick; he’d go far in the Watch, Klar thought. But he missed his son’s smile, his laugh, and, lately, his strong back.

They entered the mudroom and sat on the edge of the floor, built high off the ground, to pull their boots off. There were dozens of pairs there… those dusty ones at the back belonged to Brytos, he thought. He should really clean those up and put them away. Brytos might want them next time he came home.

He could hear Kyrantha and Myrn talking in the kitchen, a comforting sound.

The world shivered, the edges of his vision shimmering as through water for the briefest moment.

He blinked; it was gone.

The sunset was almost gone, too, the sun below the horizon and the orange glow faded to a somber maroon, the minarets of Celephaïs black in the dusk.

He blinked again and listened, but there was nothing but Brute’s breathing and the distant cry of crows heading home.

He and Chek washed up and changed into cleaner clothes, and by the time Klar was done, the food was already being served. Myrn was doing something over the stove, and Kyrantha was sitting at the table, pouring a rich stew over a heaping plateful of rice.

Klar pulled the salad closer and used the tongs to fill up four smaller plates, one for each of them. The salad came from their garden, of course: lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, bell peppers, and few other bits and pieces to delight the palate.

“I think I’ll send a load of peppers and broccoli to the market tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll take the carrots and radishes in myself the next day.”

“On Garibon’s first wagon?” asked Chek. “You need help getting it ready in time?”

Klar chuckled. Garibon lived a few kilometers up the road, and some years ago had the bright idea of offering to carry people and goods into the city and back, for a price. He had three wagons running now, and a lot of people found it awfully convenient to be able to just pay him a couple skelf—or a few pence at the end of the month—instead of carrying a dozens of kilograms of produce on their backs all the way to Celephaïs.

“While you were playing in the mud I took a little break and picked half a dozen bushels. All ready to go.”

“I wondered where you’d gotten off to!” snorted Chek. “Figured you were just relieving yourself. Wish you’d told me, though… I wouldn’t have minded a little break from that mudpuddle.”

“Don’t worry, there’ll be plenty more mudpuddles. Maybe next time.”

“Gee, thanks, pa. And maybe next time you can plow the soggy one.”

“Nah. Mudpuddles are definitely for young boys, not proper men such as myself.”

“Proper!?” broke in Myrn. “You, proper!? Who are you and what have you done with my husband?”

They broke up laughing, and Kyrantha almost choked on her tea.

That night he awoke in the darkness, alone but for the warmth.

What had awakened him? Some noise?

He looked at the wolfhounds: they’d hear anything long before he did.

Brute and Boka were alert, standing with ears sharp, hunting for something unseen. It wasn’t a threat or they’d behave their haunches up and fangs exposed. Just something that made the uneasy.

Just like him.

Myrn?

He looked over at his wife, her long black hair clearly visible even in the dimness of the midnight stars. She was breathing slowly, her lower lip quivering slightly with each exhalation.

He sat up.

Something was off.

He reached for the blanket to get up and check the house, when the world shivered again, a spasm of reality that left him disoriented and dizzy.

Off balance as gravity shifted, he fell to the floor, sliding along the rough-hewn boards until he hit the wall that was somehow below him, bright in shades of yellow and blue.

Brute whimpered, ears flat, teeth bared, head searching back and forth and finding nothing. Behind him Boka stood over her pups, protecting them from anything that might come.

A thump, color vanished.

He slid back from the wall to the floor.

The Dance of the Oneiroi!

A dreamquake, a spasm in reality as a Dream was birthed.

Nobody really knew how common they were, save perhaps the King. When the reality of the Dreamlands itself changed, they changed with it, new memories of a new past replacing the old. Usually.

Sometimes somebody might recall some previous reality, or some object, some flotsam of the eddies of transformation, might remain to fascinate and awe. Or maybe it happened all the time, and they just never noticed.

He climbed back into bed, reassured by Myrn’s quiet breathing.

Nothing had changed… had it really been a dreamquake?

Or had he just fallen out of bed?

He glanced over at the dogs, but they were quiet once more, seemingly asleep.

He listened intently, and heard nothing but the wind and the insects. In time, he slept.

* * *

He always woke with the sun, but it looked like he’d overslept this morning.

Time to feed the deinos and get started on plowing the pair of fields farthest from the house, up close to the forest. They were the newest, too, which meant they still had plenty of rocks and old roots left. It’s be another day of hard work getting that ground plowed and seeded right.

He heard the rooster crowing away, and the heavy footsteps of Chek.

His head throbbed with pain, and his vision was blurry. He wondered if he’d caught something. He really didn’t feel like getting out of bed, but he did anyway. No sleep for the farmer.

He looked behind him—Myrn was already up and about.

He sat up, swinging his legs off the bed and onto the floor, and caught himself. His head pounded and he closed his eyes and hung his head for a moment at the sudden pain.

When he opened them again, head still hanging down, he saw his body for the first time… his belly ballooned out over his thighs, the hard muscles of a farmer gone.

He blinked, shook his head, reached out to feel his own stomach.

Fat.

He was fat.

And the arm he’d used to poke his own bulk was itself flabby, bags of soft, pale flesh hanging down from the arm that had only yesterday been tanned and muscular.

“Myrn!”

His voice came out in a squeaky rasp. He cleared his throat, tried again.

“Myrn! Could you come here for a moment?”

There was a bang in the kitchen as something was set down with considerable force, and then footsteps.

“What?”

She demanded an answer, hands on hips, lips tense with suppressed anger.

“Wha…? Why are you… so angry?”

“Get your lazy ass out of bed and get off to work! We’ve all been up for hours while you’ve been snoring away.”

Astonished, Klar could only gasp like a landed fish, unable to gather his wits before his wife has turned and stalked away again.

He followed her into the kitchen, expecting to see her making breakfast, or taking bread out of the oven. There was no food on the table, and she was sewing a linen dress, a basket of other clothes at her feet.

She didn’t even look up as he entered, merely grunted something indistinct.

Still wondering what he’d done to upset her so, he walked to the front door to scratch Brute and Boka on their heads. Boka was busy feeding the pups, lying on her side as they pushed and shoved over each other in search of morning milk.

He heard a gasp of surprises from behind him, and turned to see Myrn staring at him, eebrows raised, mouth open.

“He didn’t bite you!”

“He… wha…? Brute?” he sputtered. “Why would Brute bite me?”

Myrn, shaking her head and muttering to herself, returned to the kitchen without replying.

He gave the dog another scritch and sat down on the edge of the mudroom to pull on his boots, glancing outside to check the weather.

And froze in disbelief.

An expanse of dry dirt and dead trees met his eyes, stretching away for hundreds of meters to the distant line of trees farther up into the hills.

No cornfields. No freshly turned earth, no line of pumpkin plants, or cucumbers, or herbs.

No paddock. No deinos.

He rose on shaking legs to stumble outside.

The house was much the same, log and slat construction with mortar packed into the cracks, a turfed roof that slanted back into the earth on the north side.

The chicken coop.

A cow—not three cows and a barn, like it should have been, just one single cow.

He heard someone behind him, and spun around.

It was Myrn.

“We’re out of fish again, Klar. Buy some on the way home, if you can spare any from your drinking.”

She snorted in disgust as she spit it out.

“Way home? Drinking? I don’t…”

“Drunk again, and so early?” she sneered. “Go on, take it and off with you. Late again and they’ll fire you, and then where’ll we be?”

“Late? Who…?”

He shook his head in confusion, took a deep breath.

The dreamquake… it had to be the dreamquake.

“Myrn, love, please, sit.”

He sat down on the mudroom edge again, and grasped her by the arm to join him. She yanked her arm out of his grasp with a yelp and spat at him: “My love!? You haven’t called me that for two twelves of years. Got me confused with one of those nighthawks at the pub, have you?”

“Please, just sit, Myrn,” he asked again quietly, and patted the floor next to him. She did sit, grudgingly, her feet atop her sandals in the mudroom. She kept as much space between them as she could.

“Did you feel the dreamquake last night?”

“Dreamquake? Here? There was no dreamquake last night… everything’s the same as it’s always been. And we’ve all got work to do, no time to sit here jabbering away.

“Now off to the tannery.”

“Tannery!? I’m a farmer, not a tanner!”

“You? A farmer?” laughed Myrn. “You barely know which end the milk comes out of.

You said you would turn all dirt into fields and crops, and we needed to move out here to make our own farm, but you never did, no matter how much I pushed you.”

She was getting angry now, nostrils flaring and lips thin.

“You took the little we had saved and spent it on drink. No matter where you work you get fired, because you drink. Every time. Chek and Kyrantha and I work our hands to the bone, even Brytos, thank the Gods he escaped, sends half his pay, and you drink it all up!”

He blinked, hearing every work and unable to process it.

He rarely drank; perhaps a cup with dinner once in a while, or at the Festival of the Horned God. But to drink away his family, his farmland, his crops—his dreams—he couldn’t conceive of it.

He stood, and then fell to his knees in the dirt in front of her, grasping her hands and holding them tight even as she tried to pull away.

“Myrn, I swear to you by Nath-Horthath that I am not the man you speak of. I am not a drunkard, or a tanner, but a farmer, and by the Gods I shall prove it to you to you all!”

He stood, still holding onto one of her hands, and looked out over the barren scene.

“Have we a plow, and hoes, and axes?”

She looked up at him, this time her mouth gaping open in surprise and wonder.

“A plow? Yes, old, perhaps, but serviceable. All the tools we brought with us years ago, to build a farm…”

“Do I still have time to catch Garibon’s wagon into the city?”

“Garibon?” asked Myrn, cocking her head and frowning. “Who?”

“Garibon! The wagons into Celephaïs every day? Our carrots and radishes?”

She pulled her hand back out of his.

“Never heard of no Garibon, and Gods know we have no carrots to sell! Would that we did.”

Klar looked out over the barren land before him.

He’d tamed this land once, and by the Gods he’d do it again.

He was older, and fat, for Gods’ sake, but he had Chek to help him, and Kyrantha.

“Do we have enough to buy a deino? Twelve laurels, no more than twelve and six.”

Myrn gave a bitter bark of laughter.

“Twelve laurels? I’d be thrilled if we have twelve pence to spare!”

Klar emptied his wallet into his hand.

Three pence.

He handed them to Myrn silently and bent to lace up his boots, ignoring the expressions on the faces of his wife and their two children, as they stared at this man who no longer acted like the father they knew.

If this were a dream, thought Klar, then he would Dream it properly.

* * *

His first step was seeing what he had to work with.

He found the plow easily enough, in a dark corner of the ramshackle barn. It was the first plow he’d had, years and years ago, designed to be pulled by a deino or a horse. He had neither.

He did have hoe and axe and pickaxe, though, and by that evening he’d cleared the scrub and rocks from a broad rectangle of ground.

“This will be for vegetables,” he explained to Myrn, who had brought him a cup of cool tea in the afternoon. “Lettuce and broccoli here, and over that way will be spinach, pepper, beets…”

“The stream is a long ways from here, Klar,” she warned. “Who’s going to carry all that water every day?”

“Trust me, Myrn. There is water,” he smiled. “See that bent pine over there? I’ll make a well right near it, you’ll see. Enough water to turn all this green.”

“I can’t tell if you’re really a different man, or just plumb crazy,” she said, shaking her head. “You sure sound like the man I married, but… Maybe there really was a dreamquake after all.”

“There was, I’m sure of it.”

“Brute seems to think you’re a different man. Yesterday he’d snarl every time you got close to him or Boka. You kick him all the time.”

“Me? Kick Brute?” He was flabbergasted. “I would never kick Brute!”

He eyebrows shot up and she pursed her lips.

“Maybe you wouldn’t, now, but you sure used to. Used to hit us all, too.”

“Hit you!?” He almost dropped the tea in astonishment. “Hit you? I have never… I would never…”

“You did,” she said quietly. “Especially when you’re drunk. Which is—was—often.”

He fell silent.

“Looks like I’ve got some hard work ahead of me,” he sighed. “And not just here in the field.”

She took the empty cup from his hand and glanced at his blistered, bleeding palms.

“Let me get you some salve and cloth to wrap your hands in. Your hands aren’t used to honest work.”

“Yet,” he added.

“Yet,” she agreed.

That evening she helped him wash and bind his hands, and when they sat down for dinner he noticed a jug of ale on the table. It was far enough that it wasn’t obviously his, but close enough he could easily reach it.

He reached out for it, and watched Myrn out of the corner of his eye. Her fork had come to a stop and was slowly descending again, forgotten, as she followed his hand and the jug.

“Anyone want some ale? If not I’ll stopper it up.”

Dead silence for a moment, then Chek cleared his throat.

“You don’t want any?”

“Just tea for me, I think… good cooking’s always better with tea, don’t you think?”

He pressed the cork in and set the jug down on the floor where it would be out of the way.

Myrn let her breath out and suddenly noticed the forkful of food she was still holding in the air.

Conversation started, hesitantly, as painful as his unused muscles.

After, he left Myrn speechless by thanking her for making dinner, though it had been a sad affair of little more than some greens and rabbit stew.

He picked up the jug of ale, and as his wife and children watched, expecting him to swig it down and collapse in a drunken stupor, instead walked the family altar, and poured a cup for their household god. He knelt, and set the ale on the altar as an offering, head bowed in silent prayer.

* * *

Several days later Myrn didn’t shy away when he gave her a kiss.

He and Chek dug deep near the pine, where the well had been, and it was as he had remembered. They had water now, all the water their gardens and fields would need.

He was sure it had been a dreamquake, and Myrn and the children were beginning to believe him. Finding buried water in this barren waste had almost convinced them. Quitting drink had convinced them even more.

He needed seed now. The tiny amounts they had wouldn’t even be enough to feel themselves, let alone produce enough to sell at market.

Klar suggested asking one of the nearby farmers to loan them seed, but Myrn shook her head.

“They’ll never loan to a drunkard, Klar. And they’ll not believe you’ve changed, either.”

He needed a deino to plow the fields. It wasn’t impossible to do it by hand, of course, but it was backbreaking toil, and his hands were bleeding raw already.

Once the ground was plowed, he’d need seeds. To buy seeds he needed money.

They were broke, though, relying on what they could trap or hunt in the woods, and the pittance Brytos brought each month.

That night he woke again in the pre-dawn darkness, but this time there was no dreamquake. He knew how to do it.

“I’m going up to see Master Garibon,” he announced at breakfast. “He lives up near the bend in the river, just below the ford.”

“Garibon? Near the ford?” Myrn shook her head. “Never heard of him.”

“Chek, would you come with me? It’s a short walk; if I’m wrong we’ll be back soon enough.”

“And if you’re right?”

“Then I think everything will work out wonderfully.”

Chek was unconvinced, but half an hour later they were walking up the road, deeper into the Tanarian Hills. The river, still young and fierce as it came out of the hills, ran close to the road, and Klar recalled it had flooded several times over the years.

Garibon’s house stood near the river, on an embankment that kept it out any floodwaters.

“Master Garibon!”

There was a muffled shout from the far side of the house, and a moment later a stout man came toward them. He stopped short when he saw who it was, then started walking toward them once again more slowly.

“Master Klar. And Master Chek.”

“Master Garibon, sorry to call unannounced. Have you a few moments we can talk?”

Garibon scowled. “About what?”

“About a business proposition that I believe will profit us both, and handsomely.”

“You asking me for money, is that it?”

“No, please. No money. And no ale, either,” pleaded Klar. “Ask Chek; I’ve changed.”

Garibon looked at Chek, who nodded.

“Well, I’ve never known Master Chek to lie, and you do look a lot healthier than I’ve ever seen you,” admitted Garibon. “From the look of those hands and your sunburned face, you’ve been doing honest work, too.

“I’ll listen to what you have to say.”

An hour later they had a deal.

It took two full days to get their wagon wheels fixed and the axles greased, and another day to get the benches installed and the harnesses and traces repaired, but finally it was done.

Klar already knew who his best customers would be, and what the market would bear, and the following morning they launched the new venture.

Drawn by two of Garibon’s horses, the wagon travelled from Garibon’s homestead at the base of the falls to the city walls, picking up people carrying their loads to market, or (thanks to Garibon’s well-known trustworthiness) transporting their produce for them. They made one round-trip in the morning, and a second in the evening, and by the next morning everyone knew.

For many of the farmers in the region it was well worth two or three skelf for a ride to the markets of Celephaïs and back again. Once Chek had proven trustworthy more and more of them began entrusting their goods, and receiving payment for them when the wagon returned once more.

Word began to spread that it had not been Chek, but actually Klar the Drunkard, a drunkard no more, who was behind it all.

Two months later there were three wagons running the route, and they’d had to hire a few people to help keep things moving smoothly. Garibon was scouting a possible new route from Celephaïs down toward Cornwall, where a whole new town was coming into existence around the new madrasah erected there by the King. He was delighted with the handsome return he was getting on his share of the business.

* * *

“Thank you, Treana,” Klar said, smiling as he held out his cup for a refill.

His six-year-old granddaughter beamed, carefully holding the heavy teapot in both hands as she poured.

Klar tasted the tea and smacked his lips in appreciation, earning a giggle for his trouble.

Sitting on the porch bench, he looked out over the fields: the green vegetable fields closest to the house, bursting with vitality, with tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and more hanging ripe. Beyond stretched a towering forest of corn, countless stalks waving gently in the breeze, tassels glinting in the late summer sun.

Treana’s mother was there, picking fresh greens for dinner, three-year-old Conal staying close but more engrossed with the progress of a huge caterpillar. Instead of holding onto Kyrantha’s skirt he had one hand on Marpo’s back. He was beginning to spend more time with the young wolfhound than his mother.

Klar felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up into Myrn’s face as he covered her hand with his own.

Had the dreamquake itself been a dream, a nightmare that knocked sense into him?

Perhaps he was a Dreamer after all, and as he looked out over his Dream made real, he was content.

END

– 1 –

“My usual, please, Master van der Kerk.”

“Mistress Chuli, good to see you again,” replied the man behind the counter. “That’d be a block of Gouda and a block of my own Ambroli, right?”

Chuli smiled, white teeth bright against dark brown skin.

“Yes. I love your Ambroli... can’t find it anywhere else!”

The man stopped with a look of mock horror on his face.

“Mistress Chuli! Surely you haven’t been to a different shop!?”

“On, no, of course not! Of course not,” she laughed. “I’ve been coming here for years and have no intention of ever going anywhere else.

“No, my husband and I visited Lhosk the other day, and I tried to find something good to eat there... most of them knew it, but none had any to offer.”

“It doesn’t ship very well, I’m afraid,” said Lujan van der Kerk, wrapping up a block of tan-colored cheese in a large leaf and placing it on the counter. “Something about the sea air. Too salty.”

“Oh, that’s too bad. I’m sure they’d fall in love with it, too.”

“I have more than enough happy customers here in Celephaïs, Mistress.”

He finished wrapping up the Gouda and handed her both packages.

“Thank you so much, Master van der Kerk,” she smiled, and dropped a few coins into his waiting hand “Until next time, then.”

“Have a pleasant day, Mistress. Best to the Poietes.”

She blew him a kiss as she stepped outside and vanished into the crowd of the marketplace.

Lujan van der Kerk, once of Imaut, pulled a long, thin knife out of the rack.

He carefully shaved off a thin, almost transparent slice of orange Yann Sharp, folded it over twice, and popped it into his mouth.

He closed his eyes in momentary delight at the tangy flavor, then dutifully wiped the knife clean and returned it to the rack. It was almost time for closing anyway, he thought as he checked the position of the sun against the silhouette of the Wall of Euphrosyne. His shop would be in shadow in minutes, and that meant he could expect only a very few customers.

Lujan lit the oil lamp on the counter, then closed the wood shutters over the window and drove the iron bolts home to lock them in place. The door was locked and bolted, of course. The stairs to the living quarters on the second floor danced in the flickering lamplight, and the massive door to the storeroom looked heavier than ever.

Instead of heading upstairs, he opened the storeroom door and stepped inside, closing the door again behind him.

The walls were lined with shelves, packed with wheels of cheeses of all sorts, but he walked past them all without a glance, straight to the second door at the back of the room.

He pulled the ornate key out of his pocket and unlocked the door. It was too dark to see inside, but he didn’t hesitate: he knew every inch.

Lujan snuffed the oil lamp out and set it on a nearby shelf, closing the door as he waited for his eyes to adjust to the faint bluish light.

In the center of the room a large iron grate was set into the floor. Coolness flowed up from below, making the tiny brilliant motes dance in the air.

Spores.

They glowed blue, their dim light revealing dozens of wheels of Ambroli. He checked each one carefully, looking for the slightest imperfection or discoloration, until he reached the end, and stood in front of the altar. It was covered in fungi of all shapes, all blue in the light of the spores.

He knelt to kiss the low stone pedestal.

“Mycelia Spore-Mother, I offer my flesh and blood to you freely. I beseech your blessing for myself and my house.”

He held a small knife to his palm and sliced it open, grunting in pain as blood spurted out onto the pedestal. He gritted his teeth and set his bloody palm flat onto the pedestal, and waited, head bowed, chanting the prayer to his goddess under his breath.

The pedestal slowly turned darker, stained with blood shining black in the dim lighting.

The prayer ended, and he lifted his head to gaze upon the misshapen form of his goddess above the altar. Was that the faintest hint of a smile on that rough-hewn face? Were her swollen limbs, her pendulous breasts, more shapely, more human, than before?

He thought so, but he’d thought that every day for dozens of years. Perhaps she would never come to him here. Perhaps.

He lifted his blood-stained hand from the pedestal and stared at it in awe.

Her blessing!

The wound was gone, healed to leave only a smear of blood and one more scar to join the dozens upon dozens that already crisscrossed his palm.

A few shining motes danced across his palm, or in it.

Lujan van der Kerk, Godsworn of Mycelia and purveyor of fine cheeses to the people of Celephaïs, kissed the pedestal once again and turned to go upstairs to family and supper.

– 2 –

“What is it, Gobbler? Is daddy back?”

Wiping her hands on her apron, Glaire stuck her head out and looked into the street. Gobbler, their pet raptor, was pushing at the bars across the lower half of the doorway, eager to get outside.

It was Finh, alright, walking beside the enormous deino pulling the wagon. It slogged along, one heavy clump at a time, oblivious to angry objections of passers-by who had to step out of the way to let it pass, and also seemingly oblivious to the ton of wet clay in the wagon.

“I’m home!” came her husband’s voice in confirmation. “Let me get this wagon out of the way, and take the deino back. Everything OK here?”

“Sure, everything’s fine. I was just having a cup with Nessie. The kids are still at schola, should be back soon. You want some tea?”

“I need something cold more than some tea, Glaire. Be a bit yet, though… later.”

He prodded, whacked, and cajoled the deino until the heavy wagon was safely in the workroom, then unhitched it and walked it back toward the Street of Pillars where he’d rented it earlier that day. He could afford to buy his own deino, of course—he could get a perfectly good deino for six or seven tiaras—but finding a place to keep it in the city was more difficult, especially when you considered how narrow these alleyways were. Not to mention how much food they ate!

He only needed one when he went off to his quarry in the Tanarian Hills to fetch more clay, once a year or so.

He returned the deino and collected his surety. They’d dealt with each other so long he probably didn’t even need to put up a surety anymore, but he’d never asked.

He took a small detour and picked up a half-dozen cinnamon honey cakes shaped like butterflies.

By the time he got home Kahlia and Finjul were waiting, and delighted to see his present.

“Thank you, papa,” said Kahlia as she accepted a cake politely, and gave a small bow in thanks. Only ten, she was already acting like the beautiful lady she would no doubt grow to be.

Finjul, two years younger and far more energetic, was less polite, snatching up one cake in each hand and managing to get a muffled thanks out in spite of cramming them into his mouth at once.

He sat down at the table with his wife and Mistress Nessie from across the street and wiped his face with the moist towel Glaire handed him.

“Hot day to be dragging all that clay around, Master Finh,” said Mistress Nessie.

“Poor deino did the draggin’,” he explained. “I just told it where to go.”

“Uh-huh,” nodded Glaire. “And who loaded all that clay onto the wagon?”

“I told that clay to get in the wagon, and it jumped right up there by itself! Magic!”

“Here, Oh Great Sorcerer—some cool ale may help the cake go down.”

He accepted the jack of ale gratefully and down half of it in a single gulp. He visibly relaxed and set the jack down on the table.

“Getting pretty old to be carting around tons of clay anymore,” he sighed.

“Can I have the last one?”

Glaire reached out slapped the boy’s hand away from the last cake.

“You already had two, you pig! That’s your father’s, and say thank you properly, young man!”

“Thank you, father,” he parroted at once. “But if you don’t want it…”

“No such luck, Finjul,” laughed Finh and popped the cake into his mouth.

He turned back to the two women.

“Forgive me, I must smell like deino… Let me go wash up. I won’t be able to get that clay all cleaned up until tomorrow; might get some throwing done in the afternoon, though.”

“Fin! Kahlia! I’m going to the baths. You want to come?”

“No thank you, papa,” came the girl’s voice. “I’ve got to finish my sums before it gets dark.”

“Good girl!” he nodded. “And you, Finjul? No homework for you?”

“I’ll do it later, papa, promise!”

“A man keeps his promises, Finjul,” broke in Claire. “And I’ll hold you to it, later.”

“You and Kahlia’ll go later? Or tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow, I think,” replied his wife.

“I’ll pay for you, too, then. Be back in a bit,” said Finh, draining the jack and standing from the table. “C’mon, lad, let’s go see who’s at the baths today.”

* * *

Finjul, riding a sugar high from the cakes he’d wolfed down, stayed reasonably close to his father as they walked down the alley. He’d learned that much, at least, and Finh kept an eye on him to be sure he didn’t break anything or get trampled by a passing horse.

Most of the shop owners merely watched the boy pass: a few scowled, perhaps at some unfortunate recollection, one handed Finjul a piece of apple and sent him on his way.

The sun was beginning to dip toward the horizon and the baths would be getting busier as people finished their work for the day.

They headed toward the public baths. Finh had left his wallet at home, carrying only two iron skelfs, the smallest coin. The public bath was only a skelf, cheap enough that even the lowest-paid laborers could afford it.

The entrance to the bath was crowded with people coming and going. There was the usual assortment of soldiers, merchants, dock workers, housewives, children of all ages, even a Godsworn or two. Many public baths in the Dreamlands were mixed bathing, but this particular one had separate baths for men and women to prevent undue problems. In theory it was to keep the noisy children away from the men’s bath, but nobody had any illusions about what sort of problems they were trying to prevent.

The Lofts and its vast array of entertainment were quite some distance away, but the fish market and the cargo seadocks were a short walk. Not everyone in Celephaïs was gentle and restrained, regardless of what King Kuranes might think.

Finh coughed.

It was a small cough, the sort of cough anyone might make.

He coughed again, and felt a searing pain in his chest.

He clutched his side, over the lower part of his right lung, and stopped, bent at an angle to the right by the pain.

His face contorted in pain, he slowly collapsed onto his knees, catching himself from toppling facedown with his other hand.

“Papa…?”

“Finjul… I can’t…”

“Papa? Papa!”

His hand failed and he fell the rest of the way.

The boy knelt at his father’s side, pulling helplessly on his tunic as a thread of spittle dribbled from his mouth to the cobblestones.

Before the blackness claimed him, he heard a woman’s voice shouting for Healer Pontil.

– 3 –

Lujan frowned and held his breath for a moment.

There it was again… a tiny movement.

The boards of the wood floor creaked faintly, one rising the merest fraction of a millimeter as he watched.

Something had stirred them up, he thought.

“Crija? Could you take over for a few minutes?”

“Be right down!” shouted his wife from upstairs. She joined him shortly, wiping her hands on her apron. “What’s up?”

“Just need to check on something in the storeroom,” he said. “Shouldn’t be long.”

He hurried through the storeroom with its wheels of cheese and unlocked the door to the second room at the very back. He had brought no oil lamp with him this time, but long years had etched every step into his memory, and by the time he’d raised the heavy iron grate from the floor to reveal the yawning pit beneath, his eyes had adjusted to the point he could see perfectly well in the dim blue light emitted by the tiny motes drifting in the air.

He pulled his sandals off, setting them neatly next to the yawning pit, and without any hesitation swung his legs in and climbed down into the darkness.

There were no motes here to illuminate his way, but the walls and ceiling were covered with splotches of something that looked like lichen, giving off a dull red light. It was enough to make out the walls of the rough-hewn tunnel and the enormous mushrooms growing from every surface except the narrow, twisting path leading into the gloom from the ladder.

As he walked deeper into the tunnel, following the trickle of water that ran down the center of the path, he picked off a few convenient mushrooms to nibble on, enjoying their pungent flavor and chewy texture. He’d always wanted to sell mushrooms, too, but all the truly delicious ones dried out so quickly in the outside world…

He could hear them twitching and sliding before he could see them.

The tunnel opened up on one side into a fairly broad space, filled with thin stalks waving back and forth like wheat in the autumn breeze: a multitude of mushrooms. In the reddish light they all looked black but he knew they were really a yellowish white, the shade of old ivory, the tiny cap at the top of each stalk a brilliant, electric blue.

“What is it, my lovelies? What do you hear?”

There was no response, of course, and Lujan wriggled his toes in the damp soil, digging his feet slightly into the earth. He closed his eyes, relaxing his body as his breathing and heartbeat slowed and his senses sharpened until he could feel the fungoid life around him.

The tall, thin mushrooms waved as if in an unseen wind, uneasy, afraid… the gardeners, dozen-centimeter long slugs, had pulled in their eyestalks and were huddled in place, afraid to venture forth even into the safety of this hidden garden.

This was the third time he’d seen this, although he didn’t realize what was happening the first time until much later. Fatally later.

Something dark had come to Celephaïs, something evil.

– 4 –

“Healer Theros?”

“Yes, what is it?” she answered, putting down the hairbrush and stroking the long-haired cat one last time.

“It’s happened again, Healer, this time in the Cirque of the Jade Bull just south of the Avenue of Amphitrite. Healer Pontil says he’s tried everything and nothing works.”

“The same thing?”

“It seems to be,” said the young Godsworn, nervously pushing his long black hair back up atop his ear with one hand. “Acute pain and coughing, weakness, bluish vision with ‘flies’, a growth of whitish-gray tissue around the mouth, eyes, and elsewhere. Fainting. The first case was just reported yesterday, and so far there are no reports of anyone reaching the final stages.”

“Eaten alive from the inside by those creatures… a horrible way to die…”

The cat, ignored, plopped off her lap to the floor, and leisurely stalked out of the room.

“I hoped we’d seen the last of that horror years ago…”

“As did I. But it’s back, and Healer Pontil asks for your urgent assistance. A family of four: the husband and two children are sick but the wife is not.”

“At once, of course, but I fear I can do little,” said Theros, standing and adjusting her simple sky-blue robe. She picked up her serpent-entwined staff, sign of her calling and her goddess, and strode out of the room with the vitality of a young woman in spite of her salt-and-pepper hair.

“Find Godsworn Cressida and tell her everything you have just told me. It is of the utmost urgency,” she commanded as she left, and he bowed as she passed.

“To the altar,” she said to the two women waiting outside her room. They were young, only admitted to the order a few years ago, and although they were still studying and mastering the techniques of healing, today they would serve as her assistants.

They would certainly remember the lessons learned today, she thought to herself.

Her quarters were only a short distance from the central altar of the temple, and as the four of them entered the main hall she noted half a dozen people who had come to be healed. Other Healers were already talking to them, helping them as needed.

She smiled to herself as she recognized Pharad, a rotund pubkeeper in his forties who came every week without fail, complaining of new aches and pains. She’d looked at him herself, and agreed with the opinion of the other Healers who had seen him in the past: he was merely a hypochondriac. Still, he was a wealthy hypochondriac, and if he felt better after a Healer laid hands on him and proclaimed him cured, then it was a just fee for a service rendered.

She knew of several Healers who visited his pub to give him a “quick checkup” which somehow always seemed to involve a drink or two on the house.

The altar was immaculate, as always, the light shining in through the high windows reflecting off the polished bluish marble surface. In the center of the altar was a wide, shallow bowl of golden orichalc, half-filled with fine white sand and scattered piles of powdery white ash. Two sticks of resiny incense still smoldered, standing upright in the sand and giving off wisps of pungent smoke. A smaller plate to the side held ruddy embers.

It was flanked by coiled snakes, captured with the energy of life in silver, the one to the left coiled tightly at rest, tongue flicking out to test the supplicant, the one to the right with head up, poised and ready to strike. Rumor said that the right-hand snake would come to life to bite and kill any who failed the test.

Theros knew the truth of the matter, of course, but wisely made no comment.

She pulled back the sleeve of her robe and picked up a small stick coated with yellowish resin, praying to Panakeia, Goddess of Healing, in ancient Greek. She waved her hand to flare the glowing ember to life, and touched the incense stick to it until it caught, then carefully stood it in the sand. She inclined her head in respect, still chanting, and repeated the process two more times before she was done.

She stood and adjusted her robe once again, then turned to face the others.

“And now to work,” she announced, and they trailed her as she strode from the temple. North along the Wall of Aglaea, and across the Avenue of the Lad in Green, then the broad Street of Pillars. The buildings were fairly clean here, merchants and craftsmen showing their wares or working in their shops; shoppers, hawkers, children, even tourists, were common here, but shortly they reached the Healer blocking the entrance to an alleyway.

“Healer Theros! Thank goodness you’ve come,” he said, stepping back to open the way.

“May we pass, Healer?”

He bowed and waved them on.

“Of course, my apologies! Healer Pontil is with them now.”

“Thank you,” she replied, nodding briefly as she led her party past.

There was another Healer standing at the doorway to an older, two-story building. Like many of the homes in this area, the structure consisted of two homes, each with its own entrance and in this case each housing a family.

“Healer Pontil!”

A youngish, balding head popped out of a nearby window.

“Healer! Thank Panakeia you’re here! Come in, come in, please!”

The rooms smelled faintly of pine and lavender, additives used to provide a gentle, cleansing scent to the medicinal incense healers used. She noted that every doorway and window had been properly “sealed” with a stick of slow-burn incense to contain whatever was loose in these poor people.

A middle-aged woman knelt in the atrium, beseeching her aid.

Theros squatted in front of her, placing her hand on the woman’s shoulder.

“I am Healer Theros of Panakeia, Mistress. Lift your head and come, sit with me.”

The woman looked up into Theros’ face for a moment, then wiped the tears off her cheeks with her sleeve. Theros sat, patting the bench next to her until the woman joined her.

“What is your name, Mistress?”

“Glaire, Healer. Glaire of Ophir.”

“Ophir is a beautiful city, Mistress Glaire. I love the beauty of its iridescent domes in the fires of the setting sun.”

“You’ve been there?”

“Oh, many times, Mistress Glaire, many times. Tell me, when did you come to Celephaïs?”

“My father promised me to Master Finh a little more than a twelve of years ago, and I have lived here with him since.”

“A potter, I see, and judging from that vase over there, a very good one.”

“My husband is an artist; many of his works can be found in High City.”

“A talented man indeed,” soothed Theros. “Tell me about him.”

The conversation proceeded, Theros gradually relaxing the woman, taking her mind off the sickness affecting her family while probing for more information. Theros knew that Healer Pontil had already examined the sick, and for now she wanted to know why Glaire’s husband and two children had fallen sick while Glaire had not.

She discovered that the potter, Finh, had gone into the Tanarian Hills east of the city to gather more clay. He had a secret source deep in the Hills, Glaire explained, that yielded high-quality clay. He’d returned only a few days earlier, with a wagonload of clay.

Yes, Glaire nodded, he’d been doing the exact same thing, and bringing home the exact same clay, ever since they’d wed eleven years earlier.

He hadn’t taken the children, ten-year old Kahlia and eight-year old Finjul, with him.

He had fallen unconscious suddenly on the way to the public bath, and had been falling in and out of consciousness since. The children—the boy first, then later the girl—had started coughing several hours later and were now unconscious as well... infested with ravenous creatures that would eat them from the inside out before bursting free to escape back into the wild.

She had seen all this before and felt as helpless now as she did then—unable to do anything to help, unable to even discern the track of the evil as she could so many other injuries or diseases. It was invisible to her, and even physicians could find nothing to treat but the symptoms.

And thus far these symptoms always meant death.

Was it something in the clay?

She questioned the woman in depth. Had she ever touched the clay? Had her children?

Glaire herself never touched slimy clay, she said, and she was busy with housework and the children besides. The children might have, she admitted; they were always getting into things they shouldn’t.

But Finh had used this clay countless times before, she wailed.

She comforted the woman as best she could, then stood.

“Let me tend to Finh, and to your children, Mistress Glaire. Rest for now.”

Finh was awake, lying face-up on the bed. Only his eyes were moving, seemingly following insects about the room. She knew bluish spots were dancing in his eyes, making him think there were tiny insects circling him, but there was nothing there. The tiny specks he saw were actually inside his eyeballs, not mere hallucinations, but the Healers would keep that unpleasant fact to themselves.

A flaky, whitish material was caked around his mouth and nostrils, thinner in the corners of his eyes. From experience she knew it couldn’t be washed off, and if scrubbed or picked off would leave the flesh bleeding and raw.

“They are just dots in your eyes, Master Finh. They can’t hurt you at all.”

“Who…?”

“I am Healer Theros, Master Finh. I bring the blessing of Panakeia for you and your children,” she said, even as she wondered if her Goddess’ blessing could succor him.

With the help of Healer Pontil and her two assistants she set up the portable altar, and measured out the ingredients for the incense herself. She ground them slowly and precisely in a ceramic mortar until they were a fine dust, then added the tarry oil to the mixture, kneading it with her fingers until it reached the desired consistency.

Silently, she worked it into a small pyramid, perhaps a centimeter on a side, and placed the finished piece on a small bronze dish. She sat down cross-legged next to Finh and accepted a piece of lit punk from Pontil, using it to light the pyramid.

She handed it back as the pyramidal incense began emitting a light green cloud of smoke that smelled vaguely of wet dog. With her two assistants mimicking her every move, she began to chant once again in ancient Greek

She closed her eyes and used the gift of the Goddess to look into his body, searching for the tracks of disease. There was an insect bite, easily cured. A bit of tooth decay that might become painful in a year or two, impossible for her to fix but she could at least slow it down. Nothing in the heart, the lungs, the brain, the spine… she dug deeper, inspecting individual organs one at a time, probing, searching for any trace of the invader.

His lungs were seeping blood, slowly, through damaged tissue. She helped his body begin to repair the damage, but try as she might she could detect no sign of any possible cause. And even as she worked to stop the flow and heal Finh’s lungs, blood began to seep through in new places, undoing all the gains she had made.

A sense of hopelessness washed over her… even with the help of the Goddess, she could see nothing. No track of illness, no injury, no sign of the hungry worm she knew lurked within.

She thought furiously, searching for anything that might help, and her concentration flagged. Her sense of Finh’s body spread, became indistinct.

Something was off.

She couldn’t identify it at first, but once she figured it out she couldn’t understand how she’d missed it. How they’d all missed it.

“It’s not what we can see,” she whispered, “It’s what we can’t.”

Where there should be a pulsing tapestry of blood vessels, nerves, muscle, the architecture of a man in his prime, there was a blank, a splotch of emptiness, in one lung. She couldn’t see what it was, she could only see where the natural tissue of Finh’s body ended, vanishing into a blob of nothingness that was impossible to bring into focus.

“Look at his left lung, Pontil. At the bottom. And you too,” she added to her assistants. “There’s something there, something I cannot track at all.”

There was a moment of silence, and then a gasp from Pontil both

“But what is it? Why can’t we see its track?”

“And how did we miss it until now?” asked Theros. “If the Goddess cannot show us its track it must be Other… something from Outside.”

“The stones of Mnar, in the Temple!”

“Yes, the starstones of Mnar may help. We must bring one here at once.”

Theros spun around to face her assistants.

“Ban Thua, return to the Temple at once, and bring one of the starstones.”

The woman nodded, stood, and hurried out of the room on her mission.

“Treyd, summon the city Watch. I need the whole block cordoned off, nobody in or out until I can check them. Godsworn Cressida, Master Chuang, and probably others will be coming; guide them to me immediately. you are also to the temple.”

“Yes, Healer,” said the young Godsworn, and fled.

“Healer Pontil, assist me. We must check the children as well, and also Mistress Glaire.”

“And perhaps even the clay, Healer,” suggested Pontil.

“Yes, good. But first the children.”

They turned to their work.

– 5 –

It’s still early, he thought. If I’m lucky I can find it—or them—before it’s too late.

He’d dealt with a wide variety of visitors, some inimical, some not, over the years, and had a matching variety of scars and aches that spoke to his years of service. The King and Chuang always did what they could, of course, but his injuries were rarely of this world. Or even of Wakeworld.

The wounds of Outside lingered for far too long.

He walked through a rough-hewn doorway to another chamber. The flood ended right in front of the doorway, with a narrow path leading to the right, into a deeper darkness. In front of him dark, oily liquid rippled, glinting a sullen red into the dim radiance of the mold adorning the walls and ceiling.

He knelt next to the pool, leaning forward to peer into its depths.

It was too dark to see anything, of course, but he only needed to discern a fine, hairlike mass floating on the surface. He picked up the simple bamboo rake lying there and swept it across the surface of the pool, hoping to capture one of the writhing organisms.

Once, twice… on the third sweep he felt something touch the stick, and slowly pulled it toward himself. Something that looked like a tangled ball of yarn hung suspended, soggy filaments lying limp on the surface, those submerged twitching and wriggling as they continued to blindly hunt their microscopic sustenance.

This’ll do nicely, he thought, and picked it up.

Holding it carefully cupped in one hand he reached out and picked up a wood bowl, scooping up a bowlful of water and then gently sliding the blob in. It floated, quiescent, on the surface, seemingly a bit of pond scum you might find in any pond.

He retraced his steps back through the darkness, holding the bowl as still as possible while watching the dim reflections in the water that revealed the profile of the floating creature. There was no motion that he could see.

He breathed a sigh of relief… there were no spores from Outside down here at least. He set the bowl down. He transferred the contents of the bowl to a deep glass jar that would be easier to carry without spilling. Outside in the light a glass jar would be ideal.

If he could locate the spores before they’d fully taken root, he’d need the potion, too. He snapped off a fist-sized chunk of fungus from one of the many niches lining the walls, then picked a clump of delicate pink toadstools and dropped them into a pocket. He picked up another, larger bowl and pressed it flush against the wall under a huge gray mass of fungus hanging from the ceiling. Carefully, taking care to avoid getting splattered, he used his knife to cut a hole and let the clear, pungent liquid drip out.

Even he, accustomed as he was to the stench, pressed his nose again the inside of his elbow, breathing through his tunic sleeve held tight over his mouth.

He had enough in a few minutes and thankfully retreated toward the ladder up leading up out of the darkness. He could make the rest of his preparations upstairs in the light.

“Crija, I’m afraid I have an errand to run,” he said as he stepped out of the storeroom and into the shop. His wife was just wrapping a block of flaky whitish Ylourgne for the dumpy matron at the counter.

“Give my regards to Lord Atridoon, Mistress, and have a pleasant day.”

The customer nodded fractionally as she accepted the cheese and stumped out without a word.

“What’s happened?”

“Something is loose in the city.”

“You don’t mean…!”

“Yes, I’m afraid so. Something from Outside,” he explained. “I’m going to mix up the potion now, and then see if I can find it.”

“Dogs again?”

“They just scented it, so it can’t be very big yet… rabbits should be fine if I can find it quickly enough.”

“Let me grind it for you,” said Crija, holding out her hand.

He dropped the chunk of shelf fungus into her waiting palm and turned to the workbench. He set the bowl of foul-smelling liquid on the bench, then pulled the pink toadstools from his pocket.

He hooked his foot under a nearby stool, dragging it over to sit so he could see wat he was working on more easily. He gently separated the individual toadstools, and then pulled the caps off, scraping out all of the stem material. He washed the tiny caps, only a few millimeters in diameter, in running water, and set them to dry on a linen cloth. He thought four would be enough, and he’d have difficulty carrying more than four rabbits in any case. Just to be sure, though, he decided to prepare a dozen in case he needed them later.

If he needed more than four right now, or if the rabbits were too small, even a dozen extras might not be enough…

“Moggy! I need you to run an errand for me!”

“Yes, father,” came the muffled response from upstairs, and he was shortly joined by his eldest, Mogucent, a slim boy of twelve years.

“Take this to the King’s Guard at the main gate of the Pinnacle. He’ll know what it is,” he ordered, handing the boy a small ceramic tile with an enameled picture of yellow butterfly on it. He could send the red or purple signs later if necessary, but for now he had to let Chuang know.

Moggy dashed out of the door and Lujan turned back to his toadstools. They were probably dry now, he thought, and inspected them closely to make sure.

He added six drops of ammonia and the quicksilver to the clear liquid he’d tapped from the fungus, and Crija measured out the powdered fungus. When the mixture was ready he gently immersed the toadstool caps. They waited for them to change color, watching as they gradually darkened from soft pink to a harsher, more fiery red before finally reaching the deep, dark red of ripe cherries.

He fished them out with a broad, flat net, and set them out to dry on the linen once again.

“What should I do with the leftover?” asked Crija.

“I’ll clean it up later; just leave it in the back room for now. It’ll be fine as long as nobody gets near it.”

“How much do you need for the rabbits, you think?”

“Haven’t bought one recently,” he replied, grimacing. “Four rabbits… uh, I think the warrener sells two for a penny. Let me have two pence for now. Bokash knows me; he won’t mind the rest later if it’s more than that.”

“You sure rabbits are big enough?”

“They should be enough. If I get there in time.”

She nodded and took a small sack of coins out from somewhere under her tunic. She pulled open the drawstring and poured out a handful of coins, picking up two iron pence and handing them to Lujan.

“Send a messenger as soon as you have an idea, and I’ll tell Master Chuang.”

“Right,” he replied curtly and opened the door. “Be right back with the rabbits.”

It was a short walk to the Street of Pillars, and the warrener was only a half dozen meters beyond, on an alley off the main street. His warren—where he raised his rabbits—was outside the city walls, but since rabbits were small and easy to handle, he kept a big stock here instead of at the livestock market.

Bokash had told him once that the spells to keep meat cold at the market cost him almost as much as the meat itself, and Lujan helped him out with a few minor concoctions that would retard mold and such. Nothing he could do about insects and bacteria, but mold, at least, was not a problem.

“Master Bokash, you have a minute?”

“Master van der Kerk! Come in, come in,” warbled the short fat proprietor. “Always have time for an old friend. Even better if you have time for a drink or two.”

“Not today, I’m sorry,” declined Lujan, setting his bamboo cage down on the floor. “I need four rabbits. It’s urgent.”

“Some special event?”

“Just an unexpected surprise, I’m afraid,” said Lujan, keeping the details to himself. “Maybe I can take you up on that drink tomorrow?”

“Look forward to it, Master Lujan,” replied the warrener. “Big and fat? And do you want a doe or a buck?”

“Actually, no… Small is best. Healthy, but nice and light. Doe, buck, it doesn’t matter.”

The butcher cocked his head in curiosity, then shrugged. “Demta! Demta, where are you, boy?”

A boy, perhaps ten years old or so, stuck his head out from the back room.

“Fetch four young rabbits for Master van der Kerk, boy. Bucks.”

“Yes, father.”

The face vanished, replaced by the sound of padding feet, and then rattling cages.

He was back very quickly, four rabbits—not fully grown yet—held by the scruffs of their necks.

“In the cage, Demta, don’t just stand there.”

Demta dropped the rabbits into the bamboo cage and stood there waiting for the next order, but the warrener had already turned back to Lujan.

“Three pence?”

“Pretty expensive rabbits, seeing as how they’re not even grown yet. How about a penny for the bunch?”

“A man’s gotta make enough to live on, Master Lujan! Two for the lot?”

“Deal.”

Lujan handed over the coins and picked up the cages, one in each hand.

“Thank you, Master Bokash. Save some of that brandy for me!”

He pushed the door open with one foot and hurried back to his own shop.

As he entered his own shop, cage in hand, he noticed another customer.

“Ah, Master Kuloni’e, a good day to you! I trust the Factor is well?”

“Master van der Kerk, yes, well, thank you. I was just arranging to have a wheel of Ylourgne delivered.”

“Excellent choice, Master Kuloni’e. I know the Factor will be delighted.”

“He always is! As am I, since he is kind enough to share.”

“Crija, give Master Kuloni’e some Ambroli as well,” he directed. “A way of thanking you—and the Factor, of course—for your patronage.”

“Oh, really, I shouldn’t…” said the customer, protesting weakly as he held his hand out and accepted the gift from Crija. They always had a number of wrapped slabs of Ambroli ready at hand to give to customers, and Lujan doubted the Factor would ever hear about it.

“Excuse me, Master Kuloni’e… I must take care of these rabbits. My regards to your wife,” he said, bowing slightly as he backed into the storeroom, cage in hand.

He shut the storeroom door and set the rabbits down on the table, the smile slipping from his face. Leaving them there for the time being, he walked to the kitchen and picked up a stalk of celery, which he cut into several handy pieces.

He made a small incision and inserted one of the red toadstool caps in each piece.

He pulled one rabbit out of the cage and dropped it into a second, topless cage on the floor. He offered it one of the pieces of celery, which it happily accepted and began munching away on. It took only a few minutes for the celery to disappear, toadstool and all, and the rabbit to fall asleep.

The process was repeated for the remaining rabbits, and a short time later the four were returned to their carrying cage, slumbering away.

Now to find those damned spores, he thought to himself. Guess I’ll take the pushcart this time... I’m really getting too old for this.

He set the rabbit cage on the cart’s bed along with the glass jar and its slowly writhing inhabitant, and lifted the two shafts up off the floor before he stopped in thought for a moment, then set them down again.

Best take a few bits of cheese with me… never hurts to advertise.

“Crija? Give me a few of those Ambroli samples, would ya?”

She brought half a dozen of the small cheese blocks, glancing at the unconscious rabbits as she handed them over.

“I hope you don’t need them all… the kids’d love another rabbit for a while.”

“I hope so, too, but… We’ll see.”

“Good luck.”

He picked up the shafts again and pushed the cart into the alley, the little bell jangling quietly.

“Take care of the kids,” he said, and started down the alley toward the larger street, pushing it ahead of himself and exchanging greetings with shop-owners and passers-by.

As he walked he kept on eye on the thing floating in the jar. It hung, mostly submerged, limp tendrils hanging down, twitching gently every so often. He would walk up and down the alleys of the area until he got close enough for it to detect the invaders.

He walked in rough circles around his shop, gradually working farther and farther away. He knew it couldn’t be too far because his gardener slugs had cowered in fear, but there were still far too many streets and alleys to cover quickly with his pushcart.

Half an hour later, after he’d given away a few of his free samples of cheese and worked his way toward the Avenue of Amphitrite, the hanging tendrils began to twitch. He continued a bit in that direction, confirming he was getting closer, and when he raised his eyes to look at the homes and shops lining the alley he immediately spotted a young constable, blocking an alleyway and looking quite bored.

There was another constable up ahead, he noticed… they had obviously cordoned off a section of the block.

“Robbers?” he asked as he trundled his pushcart closer.

The constable spat and grimaced.

“Just some sickness. Pulled off our regular patrol and have us standing around all day instead.”

“Sickness!? My goodness!”

He pulled back a bit, feigning surprise.

“Thank you for protecting us, constable,” he said, and reached into his cart. “Here, let me give you a little of my Ambroli in appreciation.”

“Ambroli? The cheese? That’s pretty pricey stuff!”

“I just have a few samples with me, but please, enjoy it.”

The constable accepted the little block of cheese and immediately bit off a chunk.

“Mmm. Good stuff! Now if I only had a little ale to go with it…”

Lujan laughed.

“Sorry, can’t help you there, I’m afraid. Perhaps one of the shops here…?”

“Nah, can’t leave my post or the sarge’ll crucify me. Thanks for the cheese, though.”

“Where could I find your sergeant? I’d like to thank him, too, if I may.”

“Sarge? Down there at the crossroads,” mumbled the constable around his mouthful, pointing at the next intersection.

Lujan could see a few horses tethered at the corner, and another constable.

“Thanks.”

He began to push his cart in that direction, keeping an eye on his jar. The twitching was getting weaker. Definitely down that alley behind the constable, then.

“Godsworn van der Kerk!”

– 6 –

He spun around at the man’s voice to see Chuang striding toward him, robes clutched up out of the way for speed.

“Master Chuang! How did you find me?”

“Godsworn Cressida contacted me, too. She’s on her way, I think… might already be inside.”

“Down there, I gather? How bad is it?”

“I heard three people, just started yesterday afternoon,” said Chuang. “Come on with me.”

Lujan turned his pushcart around and walked briskly with Chuang to the alley, no longer worrying about jostling the glass jar.

“I can’t let anyone—” began the constable, but Chuang just glared at him and kept walking.

“Run and tell your sergeant that Chuang Tsu is here.”

“Chuan… Master Chuang!”

The constable was mortified and began blathering an apology but Chuang waved him off.

“Your sergeant, lad, now.”

The constable ran down toward the intersection with relief, and the two men walked into the alley.

“I prepared four rabbits,” explained Lujan. “Hopefully that enough, and we got here in time.”

“It didn’t work very well last time.”

“We caught it in less than a day this time,” countered Lujan, “and I’ve made a few changes. I think it’ll work better.”

“If it gets out of hand we’ll have to torch this whole area,” grimaced Chuang. “…so much death and destruction. We have to avoid that at all costs.”

“We’ll not have a repeat of last time.”

Healer Pontil met them at the door.

“Master Chuang, come in, please,” he urged, waving Chuang through. “I’m sorry, are you with Master Chuang?”

“Well, yes, I suppose I am,” smiled Lujan, and was about to give a more useful response to allay the poor man’s confusion when Chuang broke in.

“This is Godsworn Lujan van der Kerk of Mycelia.”

“Ah! Godsworn! My apologies, I didn’t recog…”

“Get out of his way and bring that cage of rabbits inside.”

“Of course!” said Pontil, chastened by Chuang’s brusque order.

Theros was kneeling next to Finh, who was lying on a futon on the floor, holding up an eyelid to peer into one of his eyes. On the other side of the Godsworn lay the two children, ten-year-old Kahlia and eight-year-old Finjul, their mother wiping their faces with a damp cloth.

They all looked terrible, especially the older Finh. There was a whitish, flaky buildup around his eyes, nostrils, and mouth. A starstone of Mnar lay on his chest.

The children had only a few traces of white around their mouths, and while Finh was apparently unconscious the children drifting in and out of consciousness, breaths rasping in their chests and their eyes darting around the room in pursuit of something no-one else could see.

“It won’t come on,” whimpered Glaire, rubbing the towel over the girl’s face again and again. Tears were dribbling down Kahlia’s cheeks, and wiped off cleanly on the towel although the white growth around her mouth stubbornly remained. In one place it had come off, tearing off a patch of skin from her chin to leave the pale red of a shallow wound, plasma welling.

“Mistress, stop, please… it won’t come off,” advised Theros, no doubt for the fiftieth time. “Master Chuang is here from the King, and Godsworn van der Kerk. They are here to help.”

She looked up and noticed them for the first time.

“Please! Please help them!”

Chuang knelt down next to her and placed his hand atop hers.

“Let us help, Mistress. Give us room to work.”

She straightened her back, took a despairing look at her husband and children lying on the futon, and folded up even further, hiding her face between her clutched knees, sobbing.

“Healer Pontil, perhaps the Mistress would feel better if she had some tea,” suggested Chuang gently. “In the kitchen.”

Pontil understood, and helped the woman rise to her feet. He led her out of the room and into the kitchen, and nodded to Chuang as he went. He’d keep her out of the way.

Chuang laid his hand on Finh’s chest and closed his eyes.

“At the base of the left lung,” said Theros. “That empty space.”

“I see it… or rather, I don’t see anything,” said Chuang. “That’s why we had so much trouble last time. We were looking for something and we should have been looking for the lack of it.”

There was a bustle at the door and another blue-robed woman strode in.

“Godsworn Cressida. We’ve just started,” explained Lujan. “Join us.”

“I heard your conversation just now… The sergeant is here with me.”

“It would be best to get the sergeant started rounding up the people nearby,” said Chuang. “We’ll have to check them all, now and later. Oh, and we’ll need a constable to stop anyone from bothering us in here, too.”

“I’ll assign Pontil here to keep an eye on things for another week or so. And you two with him,” said Cressida with a glance at the young Godsworn, Ban Thua and Treyd. “For now you two just watch and learn. Oh, wait—Treyd, fetch Pontil. He needs to see this, too.”

She turned back to Finh.

“Now let me see…”

She knelt and laid her hand alongside Chuang’s. After a moment she opened her eyes.

“There’s another strand of emptiness leading from the lung down into the intestines… it’s spreading fast, but I think we still have a chance.

“Where are the dogs?”

“I brought rabbits this time. It’s yet young. If it’s big enough to need a dog there’s no hope for him.”

“The starstone has had no effect?”

“None yet.”

“No time left,” snapped Chuang. “What do we need to do?”

“The rabbits are drugged, and I’ve adjusted their blood to attract the larvae. The next step is to lower their body temperature as far as you can and get them to move to the rabbits.”

“Last time, with the dogs, you didn’t do prepare them, did you?”

“Just a sleeping drug,” said Lujan. “Rabbits are generally a degree of two warmer than dogs, and these poor bucks are running a fever to make them even hotter.”

“Are you sure the wife is still clean?”

“I’ve been checking her regularly, Godsworn Cressida,” said Theros. “If she is infected it’s just started, and we can deal with her later. These three need us right now.”

“Theros, you take the boy. Master Chuang, will you handle the girl? Or would you prefer the man?”

“You are the Healer,” smiled Chuang, and turned to Lujan. “We are in your hands, Godsworn.”

“It’s impossible to tell what will happen even if the things do move to the rabbits,” he warned. “They won’t care what happens to their current hosts, and I think you’ll need to act quickly to save the man if it’s beginning to root into his body.

“He might not live even if it does move.”

Healer Pontil entered the room. Cressida directed him to work with Chuang, Treyd with Theros, and Ban Thua with herself.

The six bent to their tasks, silently summoning the power needed to lower the body temperatures of the three victims. Cressida and Theros were mumbling prayers under their breaths while Chuang just sat motionless, both hands on Kahlia’s abdomen.

Lujan pulled a rabbit out of the cage and carefully made a shallow cut into its foreleg with his dagger. The blood seeped out, staining its fur bright red as he laid it down next to the sleeping face of Finh. He repeated the process for the each of the children.

“Now we just wait.”

He rocked back on his heels, watching the rabbits closely and listening to the congested breathing of the three.

Kahlia, the ten-year-old girl, was the first to react, her body arching up off the futon, head tilted back with open eyes and mouth in silent scream.

She was thankfully unconscious, and stayed that way as something gray, a writhing, amorphous blob of slime and blood, oozed out of her rictus of a mouth and flowed toward the rabbit. In seconds it had forced itself into the rabbit’s mouth and vanished.

The rabbit’s belly bulged and moved as it settled in.

Chuang’s hands moved about over the girl, and beads of sweat appeared on his forehead. Kahlia spasmed, coughing up something thick, and Chuang used a finger to scoop it out of her mouth, deftly flipping her over his knees and massaging her back. She coughed a few more times, burped, and collapsed, the rigor seeping out of her body as her breathing quieted.

“She’s fine,” whispered Chuang. “It hadn’t attached itself yet.”

The other two showed no change.

Lujan picked the rabbit up and dropped into a huge pottery jar he’d had on his pushcart.

Chuang and Pontil concentrated on the girl for a few moments, and finally Chuang pronounced her clean.

“It’ll take a while to fully recover, but she’s safe now. Healer Pontil, would you take her to her mother?”

Pontil nodded and scooped up the young girl. He carried her out of the room, and the sounds of a vastly relieved mother could be heard.

Chuang shifted to work with Cressida on the man, and when Pontil rejoined them shortly he knelt down next to Theros and Treyd, working on the boy.

He was already showing signs of reaction, his spasms getting more energetic, saliva and mucous running dripping from mouth and nose.

He made a horrible sound, a cross between a burp and a death cry, and curled up into a fetal ball, knees up under his chin and arms wrapped tight around them. His face, instead of being buried into his clutched legs, stared out straight ahead with wide-open but unseeing eyes, his mouth stretched wider than should have been possible for an eight-year old boy.

A long, thin pseudopod of pale grey flesh crept out of his mouth, inching toward the bleeding rabbit, tasting the fresh blood and probing the invitingly open mouth. It slowly crept inside, and shortly it thickened, pulsing like a snake that had swallowed dinner as it transferred itself from the boy to the rabbit.

The boy was immobile, even his breathing stopped until the thing had moved into its new home. Again, Lujan picked up the infested rabbit and dropped it into the pottery jar with the first one.

“He’s not breathing,” whispered Theros, ear pressed to the boy’s chest. “And his heart’s stopped… can any of you…?”

Pontil laid his own hands on the boy and closed his eyes, tilting his head up to stare at the ceiling with closed eyes. They sat motionless for a moment until Theros slumped in defeat.

“Nothing… No reaction at all. Pontil?”

“Me neither. He’s just not responding… I think he’s gone.”

Treyd, the youngest Healer there, spoke up quietly.

“Healer Theros… I was one of the Healers selected to attend classes at the King’s new medical madrasah in Cornwall. Classes start in a few months—they’re still building it—but Physician Nolan gave us some special advance training.”

“This is not the time nor place—” started Pontil, but Theros held up his hand to quiet him.

“What, Treyd?”

“He showed us something called CPR. It’s a way to get the heart beating again.”

“You can do it?”

“I think so… it’s not that difficult…”

Finh, lying down next to them, suddenly started thrashing, arms waving and legs kicking. Cressida narrowly avoided being hit in the face, and grabbed the arm with one hand, leaving the other on his chest.

Ban Thua, a thin Asian girl, wasn’t so lucky, catching a kick in her abdomen, but instantly latching on, wrapping her arms around it and holding it down with the full weight of her own body

“Try! It’s his only chance!” pleaded Theros, yielding his position to Treyd and turning his attention to the writhing man instead.

Treyd stretched the boy out and began thumping the boy’s chest.

“Please tilt his head to one side and clean out as much of that gunk as possible, so he can breathe,” he asked. Pontil reached for the boy’s head.

As soon as the airway was clear Treyd gave the boy his first breath, pushing his own air into the boy’s lungs mouth-to-mouth, and then back to pressing the chest.

“How long does it take?”

“Physician Nolan said to continue until it starts beating, or the patient is dead.”

Another breath.

Pontil, his hand on the boys wrist, suddenly lifted his head.

“His pulse is back! It worked!”

Treyd stopped for a moment to let Pontil lay his hand on the boy’s chest and check.

“It’s beating. And look,” he said, “he’s breathing now, too. You saved him!”

Treyd say back on his heels and took a deep breath.

“It really did work, didn’t it…” he said, almost to himself. “Physician Nolan said it worked… and it worked.”

“Chuang, can’t you still his arms and legs?” snapped Cressida, narrowly dodging another whack.

“I’m trying, but they’re not entirely his anymore!” answered Chuang through clenched teeth, his attention obviously elsewhere.

Finh’s left hand slashed through the air, raking across Chuang face and leaving three ragged, bleeding wounds down his cheek.

“Almost… almost there…” grunted Chuang, yanking his head back a bit but not removing his hands from Finh’s body. “Just a little more…”

The man spasmed with all his strength, throwing Cressida off entirely and knocking the others off-balance. They wrestled him down flat again and the first blob of slimy gray matter oozed from his mouth.

There was a terrible sucking sound, like a boot pulled from deep mud, and the man collapsed.

More blood-streaked tendrils came from his mouth, then his nose, gradually thickening as the thing moved into its new home in the unconscious rabbit.

The rabbit began to bulge, swelling gradually to twice the size of its fellow.

The last tendril slowed, thinned, and finally withdrew into the rabbit entirely. The transfer was complete

Lujan snatched it up and dropped it into the jar with the other two, replacing the lid promptly.

Finh was splayed out like a discarded ragdoll, a pool of dark blood slowly spreading from his nose and mouth, skin ashen. There was a weak movement of air bubbles around his mouth suggesting he might still be alive.

“That lung is in bad shape,” said Cressida, eyes closed. “That thing ate a lot of his lung, and he’s dying. We must stop the bleeding quickly.”

“Turn him on his side so that lung is on the bottom,” said Chuang. “Healer Cressida, Healer Theros, we have to work as one or this man dies.”

“And me,” said Healer Pontil, joining them from the boy.

Cressida shifted to give him room, and they all laid hands on Finh’s body.

“Healer Pontil, get all that fluid out of his lungs and airway. The rest of us will stop the bleeding. If we can.”

They fell silent, their attention turned inward, and knelt for a few minutes until Cressida slumped and opened her eyes.

“That’s enough for now. It’s stopped, thank the Goddess.”

“Thank our combined skill, I think… I saw no Goddess in this room,” said Chuang, sitting back and taking a deep breath.

“You don’t have to see her to feel her presence,” said Cressida, her nose and eyebrows lifting up in scorn. “It is clear that the Goddess Panakeia lent us her power to help save this man.”

“Perhaps, but I rather suspect we saved him, together with Godsworn van der Kerk and Physician Nolan’s CPR.”

“Mere accessories, mere accessories,” she replied, waving her hand in dismissal.

“Mama?”

They all turned to look at the boy. Finjul was sitting up, half-supported by Treyd, and calling for his mother.

“Constable!” called Chuang. “Let the Mistress in now!”

There was a bustle at the door and Glaire came running in, embracing and soothing the boy before turning to her husband. Her daughter, Kahlia, was right behind her, hanging onto her skirt tightly.

“Is he…?”

“He’s very weak,” explained Cressida, “Healer Pontil will stay here with you for another week or two and help him heal. His lungs will never fully recover, I’m afraid, but with time he will be recover much strength.”

Glaire bobbed her head in thanks, one hand around her son’s shoulders and the other stroking Finh’s cheek. Kahlia snuggled up next to her mother, and Glaire adjusted her arm to wrap around both of them.

“Healer Pontil, Master Finh will need constant monitoring to ensure that the seminaria morbi doesn’t cause a problem,” continued Cressida. “I will send another Healer to assist you, of course, along with the teas and incenses you’ll need. And I’ll have the check-ups continued in the area to be sure only these three were infected.”

“What is seminaria morbi?” asked Glaire.

“The seeds of disease, like grains of rice but so small you cannot see them,” explained Theros. “They caused your papa to get sick, and we have to be sure we destroy them all.”

“But if you can’t see them…” said Glaire, doubtful.

“The Goddess can see them, Mistress, and destroy them all,” stated Cressida firmly, ending that conversation sharply.

“Well, I think we’re done for now,” said Chuang as he slowly got up from the floor. “It’s time for my nap.”

“And I think I had better see to my friends in the jar here, too,” said Lujan.

“The fire?”

“The big one, certainly, and one of the others, but I think I’ll keep one of the small ones… We need to know more about these things.”

“By Panakeia, burn them all!” cried Cressida. “They’re hideous!”

“They aren’t from Wakeworld or any Dreamlands I’m familiar with,” said Lujan, “Whatever they are, they’re from outside the realm of Mycelia Spore-Mother; we think they’re from Yuggoth. In any case, the very idea of a mobile fungus is worth investigating. I’ll be careful.”

“This time,” added Chuang dryly.

“Um, yes, this time. I know what they can do now, and it won’t happen again,” agreed Lujan.

He picked up the pottery jar and carried it outside to his pushcart.

“Before I go, anyone want some Ambroli?”

END

“I’m sorry and I fully realize that you have traveled for many weeks to reach Celephaïs, but the King is not receiving any visitors at this time.”

Most people would have wilted under the furious visage of King Babacar of Thalarion, but Chamberlain Mikhail of Celephaïs remained unmoved. In fact, in addition to responding to the increasingly energetic complaints in the same quiet, measured tone, he also remained physically unmoved from the center of the doorway, blocking the entrance to the Palace of the Seventy Delights.

The two muscular guards standing on either side of the door were relaxed, one casually resting her double-bladed axe on the ground as the other merely watched with one hand on the hilt of his sheathed sword. They were watching King Babacar and his retinue while simultaneously keeping an eye on the road leading to the massive rose-crystal doors that stood half-open. Apparently carved from single slabs of the semiprecious gemstone, every inch was covered with carvings of heroes and monsters cavorting across their polished faces.

“You have the audacity to stand in the way of the King of Thalarion!?” sputtered the plump, sweating man standing in front of the Chamberlain. “Move out of the way at once!”

He reached out as if to push the Chamberlain to the side but suddenly jerked back, whipping his hand away. The double-bladed axe that had been resting quietly on the ground was suddenly in front of him, blocking his way. If he had been a bit slower he probably would have lost his hand at the wrist.

“I am sure King Babacar is tired from his long journey. Allow us to offer the King the services of the Wisteria Villa to rest. Of course, every service that Celephaïs can offer will be at your disposal.

“After you have rested and recovered from your arduous voyage I believe King Kuranes will be able to welcome you as your noble station deserves.”

The plump courtier sniffed.

“The Wisteria Villa? Hardly fit for King Babacar!”

The Chamberlain merely nodded, his face impassive although he chuckled to himself. He knew full well that the Wisteria Villa, insignificant as it was compared to the Palace of the Seventy Delights, was still far more elegant and beautiful than King Babacar’s own palace in far Thalarion.

“My most sincere apologies for the inconvenience. I will have one of the servants guide you,” he continued, and gestured to someone inside the Palace.

A young man of about twenty, but still a page, stepped into the sunlight and stood silently.

“Teros, guide them to the Wisteria Villa, and ensure they their needs are met.”

The Chamberlain bowed once more and returned into the shadows of the Palace, leaving the page to lead the way back down the paved road. The Wisteria Villa was also located on the Pinnacle, but of course below the Palace itself.

The rose-crystal doors swung shut once again behind Chamberlain Mikhail. He sighed, shaking his head as he approached Chuang.

“These kinglets and petty nobles… they drive me crazy!”

Chuang chuckled.

“The smaller they are the larger they puff up, don’t they?”

Mikhail nodded.

“I could ask you where the King is, I suppose…”

“Yes, you certainly could,” agreed Chuang, “but I suspect you probably will not. Chances are I would refuse to tell you, as I have for the last dozen or so times.”

“Yes, I think you’re probably right. But at least you’ve admitted that you know where he is, as opposed to merely avoiding any answer at all.

“Can you tell me if he’s still in the Palace?”

“I do not see why not,” mused Chuang. “Not.”

“But he certainly didn’t leave by this gate, and no airships have called all day… hmm. There are a number of other exits from the Palace, of course, but that would suggest he felt he had to sneak out, which seems unlikely.”

“King Kuranes rarely sneaks, and I think I can say with certitude that he did not sneak today. In fact, I watched him leave, and he was quite animated, conversing in a perfectly normal manner with Commander Britomartis.”

“Ah, so he is with Britomartis!”

“I never said that,” denied Chuang. “In fact, I doubt she is with him now. As Commander of the King’s Guard, though, I am confident she is watching over him.”

He was correct in both statements.

 

* * *

 

She was standing in the doorway, looking down the stone stairs leading to the floor of the red-lit cavern. Wisps of steam floated in the hot air, partially obscuring her view of the King, who was just then gingerly making his way across the floor of the cavern.

He walked very slowly and carefully, moving one foot at a time and testing each step before he shifted his weight forward. He hardly looked a king at all, she thought, dressed as he was in a simple farmer’s tunic but with heavy warboots. His head was bare of crown, and the tunic sodden with sweat in the heat and humidity.

A section of the cavern floor, perhaps a meter by two in size, suddenly tilted up with a hiss to emit a sudden spurt of steam, fortunately away from the King. He ducked down at the sound, and by the time he’d turned to look at it, the floor had dropped back again, looking as permanent and immobile as ever.

To his left a small pool of lava bubbled quietly, spitting gobbets of fire every so often.

Forbidden from joining him, Britomartis watched his every move, her hand gripping her sword tightly, lifting it up a few centimeters from its sheath and then slamming it back again, over and over and over.

The King Kuranes finally reached the flat, hexagonal stone in the center, and stepped up onto it with a sigh of relief. He was safe, for now.

He knelt facing the sphere of rock standing solitaire in the center of the hexagon, and drew his knife. He drew it across the palm of his left hand, then pressed his bloody hand against the sphere. He grunted with the pain, and Britomartis was sure she heard his flesh sizzle from the heat.

The sphere slowly reddened, as if absorbing the King’s blood, and as it grew redder the cavern slowly darkened until she could only see the black silhouette of the King against the darkly pulsing blood-red sphere.

“Now, Britomartis. You may join me.”

She leapt to the cavern’s floor and raced to the King’s side, dropping to her knees next to him.

“My King! Let me help you.”

“Later, Commander,” he said, climbing to his feet with her assistance. “The basket.”

She handed him one of the baskets and together they began to search the cavern floor, torches held high.

Britomartis saw a glint and bent over for a closer look. Yes, there was the slug, torpid now that the cavern was cooler, its smooth, cylindrical body blotchy in shades of red and gray. It had no eyes, of course; eyes were of no use to it as it bored through the bones of the earth itself. Behind it stretched its trail. As a garden slug left behind it a trail of slime, these chthonian slugs instead left trails of gold, brought up from the unknown depths below.

She used her knife to pry it loose, and dropped it in her basket.

Within minutes the two of them had collected several kilograms of gold.

She glanced at the central sphere. It was still pulsing, but much slower than before.

“Only another few minutes, my King.”

“I know,” he grunted. “Come help me… there’s nice clutch here.”

She found him kneeling in front of a small pile of what looked like a cluster of grapes at first glance. They were almost round, in various sizes up to about three centimeters in diameter.

It looked like there were a few dozen of them.

The King was using his knife, trying to pry the cluster off the floor. It didn’t budge.

She joined him, jamming her sword into a gap and using it as a powerful lever.

With a crack the cluster broke free, and split into two chunks.

They quickly lifted the chunks—surprisingly heavy—and put them in their baskets with the gold they’d collected.

“Time to go,” said the King. He glanced at the central sphere: it was almost black, just a few dull strands of red yet swirling on its surface.

They hurried back to the stairs and up out of the cavern.

A huge belch of escaping steam and sulfurous gas hurried their feet.

They walked down the tunnel a few meters to a wood bench, and the King collapsed onto it.

Britomartis pulled out a vial and scooped up a dollop of the paste with her fingers. Reaching out, she grasped the King’s cut and burned hand, using her balm-coated fingers to pry his open, and spread the healing salve all over.

His breathing steadied and as she watched his hand sloughed off the blackened flesh to be replaced by healthy pink skin. She didn’t know what was in Master Chuang’s secret salve, but it was literally a life saver.

She handed his the canteen and he took a long drink.

With a sigh of relief, he finally pulled the canteen from his lips and held it out to Britomartis.

“Thank you, Mistress. That was one of the most delicious wines I’ve ever had.”

She giggled.

“It’s the table wine, my Lord. I filled it in the kitchen just before we came down.”

He smiled and shook his head.

“Well, I’m glad that’s over. Let’s see what we got, shall we?”

He pulled his basket closer and picked up the cluster of balls.

“A good-sized egg mass, isn’t it? And yours is even a bit larger I think…”

She nodded, and twisted one of the balls off the mass. With her knife she scraped the covering shell off, revealing a brilliant ruby.

“That’s a beauty!” she smiled, holding it up to the light. “I wonder what the rest are.”

The King picked up one of his own.

“Usually rubies and emeralds go together, but every so often…”

“We haven’t gotten a firestone for some time,” she said. “I wonder if they all hatch into those slugs, or different gems birth different creatures.”

“I’ve never tried to find out,” he replied. “I’m more concerned with whether any of the larger chthonians might come looking for those who steal their eggs!”

“Must it always be you?”

“Well, when I dreamed Celephaïs I knew that I’d have inexhaustible wealth: gold and gemstones. But I never actually thought about just how I’d get all that wealth… I’ve tried to find a different way to do it, and so far it has proven impossible to dream a different method. I only caused some dreamquakes, fortunately not serious in their effect.”

“Not even with Master Chuang’s aid?”

He shook his head.

“We tried. It’s beyond our abilities. Or just immutable.”

“There are things beyond even your capabilities!”

He laughed.

“Oh, my dear Britomartis. There are dreams within dreams within dreams, and nobody knows what reality may be, if it exists at all. Perhaps I merely dream that I cannot do it, and I could if only I could look at it from the outside.”

“The outside?”

“Outside the dream, of course.”

“You mean Wakeworld?”

“No, no. Not Wakeworld, or the Dreamlands, or any of the countless bubbles of reality. Outside.”

They fell silent for a time, until the King rose to his feet.

“Come, it is time to climb back up to the Palace of the Seventy Delights, where I must once again play the part of a King, and you a Commander.”

They lifted their baskets and trudged toward the endless stairs the led back up into the Pinnacle, and daylight.