RAIA: Capital City of Trièste

Year of the Eel Moon,357 years since the last time-spill

Gulls soar low over the cars, grey wings like sails in the sky. The day swelters like wet laundry and the clouds are edged with dirt. Below the freeway, mud schufons stretch as far as the horizon, their dirty levels stacked on top of each other. Clotheslines flap in the wind. I drive faster. A bird at the windshield; it could burst through, its open maw fierce pink. I glare at it until it concedes defeat and flies off. Blood-orange sunset splits the sky.

Minutes later, I park in an alley and the car fogs up. In closed spaces, my energy hangs in the air, large and palpable. My hair is messy clumps and the usual twitches have started up at my neck and back. My body feels heavy today. Tightening my boot straps, I check the knives in my holster—two of them, sharp and lethal—then plunge into the human surge of Sector 5.

It’s Jacaranda season and the flowering trees draw tourists from across Trièste and beyond. Small lanterns hang on branches. Gondolas fill the canals. Ganja fumes in the air, strong and earthy. Near me, a ring of fire-dancers whirl. A bird. A dragon.

I walk until a hoarse voice says my name.

Turning, I take in the green maxi-skirt, the blouse with mirrors on it, the bangles. Leela Roulette. Our informant is a moth-human hybrid whose essence wafts around her skin, a shivery, yellow powder. Two feathery antennae stand up from her shaggy black hair. They are in constant movement, affected by the slightest change in atmosphere.

Next to Leela, I always feel clumsy. Her hands are a flourish. She is all air, all light. Leela is secretive; she reads everybody and reveals little about herself but with me, she softens. Perhaps it is because she has known me since I was a child of 14, lost and broken at Headquarters.

Leela’s pupils dilate, emerald green. “Come with me,” she says. “I have something to show you.”

I feel a flash of irritation about the unending day. What in old god’s hell couldn’t wait until morning?

----------------------------------------

Floodwater mold. The distinct odor assaults me as Leela pushes open the door to a hut in the bylanes of Kala Bazaar.

“Why’re you sleeping at this hour?” Leela yells. “Ryz! I told you a Kild officer was coming to talk to you.”

Lying on a ragged mattress is the most beautiful human I have have ever seen. He’s wearing black silk pajamas. His torso is bare, his legs long and assured. A body comfortable with itself. The boy turns in his sleep and opens an eye, darkest brown, almost black. “Didn’t say I would talk to them,” he mumbles. “Have you got coin?”

Leela throws a purse on the bed. “Half now. She’ll get the rest later.”

I nod even though it’s not been sanctioned.

After a moment, Ryz hoists himself off the mattress and stumbles to the kitchen where copper vessels are aligned in neat rows. He boils water in a pan, whistling. He dunks tea leaves in a pan. Still whistling. Then he leans back against the counter and stares at me as if he can see through my pores. “They make you run from the hounds? I hear that’s how you train.”

I fix him with what I hope is a cold gaze. “Your tea is overflowing the pan. What’s this exciting news?"

Stolen novel; please report.

“New shape-shifting magic.” Ryz manages to sound gloomy and smug at the same time.

“There’s been no new magic in Trièste since the last time-spill.”

Ryz shrugs as Leela steps over piles of newspapers and books to a device in the corner of the room. It looks like an old-style recorder. She hits a button and a girl’s voice comes through. “The potion—it made me a different creature. Not human. Beyond human.” She begins to sob. A dry, hacking sound. The words are not the point. The words carry a charge that cuts through my empathic sensors like blood. My arms are instantly sore. The energy is mind-crunching, belly-clenching ennui. Stabs of light flicker in my eyes.

“Ah, you feel it.” Ryz crosses to me so fast that I take a step back. My hands travel to the knives at my belt. “I didn’t expect such fear from a Kild,” he says.

“I am not afraid,” I try not to look into his eyes which have sharpened almost unbearably.

“Oh yes, you are. Which means this is important.” Ryz shoves a faded picture in my direction. A middle-aged man with dazed eyes looks at the camera and on his face, down one cheek, a pattern. It looks like tendrils, slightly raised as if they could pop out of his skin, become real. “One of the people who've taken the potion. We saw him at the recovery center in Kala Bazaar,” Ryz says.

Leela fiddles with the knobs on the device, tunes to a different frequency.

“On such potions, they felt they were god or animal, superhuman, alien. When they finally came to, there were markings on their faces—a symbol of where they had been or perhaps, what. After a while, it stopped happening. The potion disappeared from the market. There were no new people with markings. The old ones were quiet now, having got used to the change in their appearance. The story simply faded out.”

“This was the last recorded incident of shape-shifting in Raia, 3000 years before the last time-spill,” Leela says. “It’s possible someone found the ancient recipe.”

----------------------------------------

Downtown Raia is hazy with smog but the gleaming spire of headquarters is visible for miles. It is meant to inspire people to join the force. Unlike me, some have a choice. My uniform is stuck to my back, soaked with sweat. My mouth feels like the desert. I need food, a shower, the sleep of the untroubled. None of it will happen soon. Swerving into the parking lot, I prepare to meet my boss, the Last Remnant of the Warlords, also known as Eniad.

A glass elevator deposits me on the 51st floor. Eniad’s office is cold as usual, AC too low, a room of artificial lights, screens and shadows. The Last Remnant is leaning back in her chair, eyes closed, surrounded by clouds of cigar smoke. Her ash-blonde hair falls in right angles around her shoulders and her lean body is clad in white. Her face is placid as an icy lake. Unflappable, the recruits call her. Now, she sniffs the air . “You smell of Leela. Does she still wear that cheap perfume?”

I examine my scuffed boots, hoping an answer is not expected, then deliver my update.

Eniad seems unimpressed. “It’s probably a rumor but keep an ear open.”

A strange foreboding fills me. I don’t believe everything about the old religion but something about this makes me uneasy. But Eniad has already turned towards the screen. Her eyelashes glow in the light.

“When is your review?” she asks now, lighting a cigar. She knows I am waiting to leave the force. My request is up for review this year. I can hardly wait.

“In three months,” I say.

Eniad flicks a fleck of tobacco from her lip. “You’re making a huge mistake.”

The next morning, I float inside a glass cylinder. Crouching position. Lotus position. The hanged man. My neurons rest. Trainers say the Translucence is like a womb. We are made of water and to water we return. Then, breathing. A hundred push-ups. Weights. Ropes. Instructors strut and scream. Hounds circle. I climb rocks until ground is a notion.

My name is Zaria. Goddess of dawn. My mother had high expectations. Which is why as soon as my Kild abilities were revealed at an unfortunate incident involving three schoolmates and a burning picnic mat, she shipped me off to HQ “where my powers could be channeled and harnessed for my own good and society’s.” I don’t blame her too much. Most Kild do end up at in the force sooner or later to do mandatory service for ten years. I suppose she was accepting the inevitable. A little early. The up side is if I get through the review and prove I can be trusted as a civilian, I’ll get out sooner. Not everyone wants to leave. It’s good pay, a secure job, but I am restless for other things. Possibilities. The freedom to dream.

Later: On a smooth oval of dirt surrounded by Mandarin trees, I run, slowly at first, then faster. Dusty earth. The air is sweet citrus, green leaves overhead, yellow-orange grapefruit, full and ripe. Little tangerines. Tart green lime. Buddha’s Hand oranges which look like hands with fingers splayed.

In the trees, swallows.

When I raise my hand to touch the leaves, something moves. A swish. A resettling of air.