Saira Lian sits on a chair as if she would rather not be sitting down. As if her limbs, clad in flaming red shorts, would rather grapple with something. A tree perhaps. Or a mountain. It is the muted green of old lichen, her skin. I haven’t any other response and I’m I’m feeling a bit desperate but I pretend to have choices, conduct an interview of sorts. “You’re from Village #10…why do you want to move to Raia?”
“Work. I’m a herbal designer — you know what that is? I want to work here in Raia — and I’m taking a few courses at the academy.” Crossing and uncrossing her legs at the ankles, she gives me a grin which manages to be cheeky and prim at the same time.
I narrow my eyes, more from fatigue than suspicion. Herbal designer sounds fancy and vague. “You make plant arrangements? You’re Kild, you said in your application. How did you escape draft?”
“My father paid the Concilium. Do you have a lot of applicants?”
“What’s your ability? If you don’t mind me asking.”
Running a hand through her crisp red hair, Saira shrugs, then presses her palms together. When she draws her hands apart, there is a stem, brilliant green, and leaves sprouting from it. “Fairly harmless,” she says. “Been doing it since I was six. I’ve got all the certification — here….” With a swirl of her hands, she disappears the vine and briefly, the veins on her arms are illumined. She rummages in a satchel at her feet while I try to sense her energy but a wall ricochets off her body. It is a startling sensory response, only practiced by those with rare talent and the urge to be secretive. Biting back my curiosity about what Saira may be hiding and why, I ask when she can move in.
“A month from now? I’ve got a job at a herbarium in Kala Bazaar and I want to start work there soon.” She is giving me an amused look, mouth all crooked, as if she’s guessed my failed attempt to sense her.
“I’ll show you the rest of the apartment,” I offer, standing. “We’re on the third floor. There’s some outdoor climbing equipment in the grounds.”
“Sure you don’t have more questions?” she asks with a sly smile.
“Yeah, all good.”
As we climb the stairs which run down the eastern length of the building, we hear someone. “Do you know what they are doing? What they are allowing?” It is a woman’s voice, high-pitched and frantic. She is at the threshold of an open door, talking to someone inside the apartment.
“Stop being insane.” A man’s voice, gruff as iron nails. “Get inside. I’m sick of your hysteria.”
Saira clenches her fists. So she has a temper.
“Inside!” The voice again, more urgent this time.
The woman complies, banging the door behind her but we can still hear her. “The warrant on your head from last time is still not dry.”
“What if she’s in danger?” Saira demands.
Getting involved with other people has brought nothing but trouble recently so I shake off her question. “I’ll keep an eye out for her.” I say.
Reluctantly, Saira follows me to the climbing ropes which she swings up with ease, immediately looking freer, happier. “How’s the air down there?”
“The place is empty in the afternoons,” I call out. “Lots of time to practice.”
Are they cagey about us? The neighbors?” she asks when she comes down after a few minutes.
“Not really but best not to attract too much attention.”
“Is that why you dress like that?”
“Like what?” I look down at my functional black shirt and pants.
“Sorry, that was rude. Are you still giving me the room, are you?”
“I need the rent to start as soon as possible.” We agree on a week from the date and she shakes my hand with a mischievous grin. I’m not sure what the shared joke is but I can’t help smiling back.
The central square of Kala Bazaar is wet with rain and pigeon-filled, the street below my feet amber and tawny, the stones shimmering. Dust motes troubled by sunlight. Boys flick jade marbles.
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I feel a familiar sensation of calm, a wash of relief, and Ryz emerges from behind a pillar. “Leela will meet us there,” he says, sauntering up to me. I dislike the fact that he affects me like this so I scowl at him, well aware that I’m being childish. I don’t feel like being mature today. He’s eating peanuts. What is it with these two and their peanuts? “Where’s there?” I snap. “Has she found something on Emi?”
His eyes are broodily fixed on my hair for some reason. I check the scrunched-up burst on top of my head to see if it’s any different. Nope. Still scrunched up and bursting.
“There’s nothing wrong with it,” Ryz says. “I was just—,”
The blare of a high-pitched siren interrupts us as people scatter in panic. Officers have caught someone, stunned them most likely. The sound has come from the fish market, a building of white marble over which hawks circle continually in hope of food scraps. Now they fly lower as if sensing blood. I start toward the source of action with no fixed plan but Ryz grabs my arm.
A shriek of wounded birds. One of the officers must have fired upwards. My internal energy circuits are going crazy as pigeons beat their lament against stone and air. Women gather their children. Shops down their shutters.
“It’s only a boy,” someone says, flurrying past. “They’re using this stuff with Pliesia to act out.”
My neck spasms. The victim will be inert for weeks, months even, in a cell underground where he will wake, frightened and ravenous, wondering where time went. I’ve always hated the concept of stunning. To send people underground while they’re unconscious seems inhuman. They wake to the dark, unsure of how they got there.
“What stuff with Pliesia?” I ask Ryz.
“Have you been in a coma?” he growls. “Started two days back when officers raided an abandoned warehouse around here and found more goat meat and a hundred tons of explosive. They’ve been on high alert since then. Ergo, they’re acting out. Everyone’s terrified of being taken in for questioning. There are rumors of a gang making this stuff.”
We’re on the move now, passing closed shops, then stone walls on one side and the river on the other. Canoes carry people back and forth on gentle waters, seemingly unaware of the violence just unleashed a few miles away but Ryz is right. There is a palpable current of fear in the air.
“Emotions are running high among Pliesians but most want to keep their heads down and do their work,” Ryz says as we turn into his street. He pushes open the now familiar blue door of his hut. “They’re scared to risk the life they have here, poor sods.”
Inside, I stand by the window, awkward. Ryz is sweating even on this cold day. It seems like his body does not have adequate thermal defenses and for a second, something in me softens towards him.
“What is it?” he asks, catching my look.
“Nothing.” I shake off the feeling. It’s clear the guy despises me for some mysterious reason.
The door rattles and Leela bustles in, a profusion of red and gold, her arms full of brass bangles. She plonks down a crate full of bottles. “Here is the faha you asked for.”
“Partying while the world burns?” I ask.
“Tomorrow,” Ryz says. “Want to come? Have some fun for a change? On second thoughts, you’ll probably pass out or something.”
Leela washes her hands at the sink and gulps down some faha, then hurrying to the window, peeks through the shutters. “I was followed,” she says. “There’s someone who comes to the center, a recovering shape-shifter, or that’s what he claimed. A few days back, I looked at the records and saw there has been no evidence of him taking the potion. None.”
“Why would he come to the center if he’s not a shape-shifter?”
“I don’t know but he’s been following me. What’s going on with you?”
I tell her about the markings. Her expression of concern threatens to melt my steely expression. I am half braced for Ryz to laugh at me but he casts an odd glance at me and goes to the kitchen, gets busy opening packets of food, ladles curry and rice into steel bowls. “We should look for the girl,” he says. “If she passed on something to you, she may know how she did it or be able to reverse the effect.
I do a double take. Since when is he interested in helping me?
“It’s not because of you,” he says. “I have a hunch.”
“You have a hunch?”
“Yes. Gut feeling. Instinct. Intuition.”
“I know what hunch means.”
“It’s all connected somehow — the potion, the contraband meat, the girl, the guy following Leela— we need to find out more before something else goes wrong.”
“Thank you for catching up.”
He ignores my snark. “I think, this gang is making the potion or selling it or involved somehow. Maybe they’ve got wind of Leela investigating—,” He points a finger at her. “You need to be more careful. You could be in real danger. These people are trouble.”
Leela tosses her head. “I’ll be okay, I’ve handled worse rats than this.”
Being semi-immortal does make Leela slightly arrogant. I am thinking of how to put this gently when Ryz’s voice cuts through the haze. “Stop being daft. There’s no reason to give in to such hubris.”
“Hubris?” Leela guffaws. “There’s your fancy-schmancy education showing itself. Why don’t you go back home, go back to school like a good boy. That’s where you belong.”
She doesn’t mean it badly. Her tone is rough but her vibe affectionate. I can tell she wants what’s best for him. She fixes me with her glittering eyes. “What should we do first? You could snoop around at HQ, see if they know something.”
“Are you kidding, I can’t—,”
“—with Ryz’s help. You won’t be alone! He can keep you cloaked. They won’t know you’re there.”
“Leela, I’m already in a mess. They’ll send me underground—,”
“You want us to help you but you can’t lift a finger to help yourself?” Ryz’s tone is curt but the derision is unmistakable. He clanks bottles into the fridge without looking at me again. A cricket on the wall chirps. Leela casts another glance out the window. The man is still there, lurking at a cigar stall. It seems like we have run out of ideas.