Sanhedrin gathered the next day. I did my best to imagine what could be happening in that hall as I left the citadel, but soon put it out of my mind.
Easy enough. Since early that morning it had been almost impossible to stop thinking about the images I’d dreamed. Though I’d not dreamed them, really. I’d seen them. Dozing at the worktop with a hand against the Disc’s mirror, the Sight had opened. In sleep, I’d reached through space without thinking, or even meaning to do it.
I was exhausted. All through the night and the small hours I’d tried to map the place I’d seen: those sprawling tunnels of green stone and twisted chambers, bizarre machines. Every passage had at first been clear enough to follow from memory, which shouldn’t be any more possible. But the clarity had faded, outrunning my pen about an hour before dawn. Of course I’d reopened the Sight and tried to find my way back, but awake it was different. Underlying and enclosing the Deep on all sides was dense rock, vast, unyielding, and to push my awareness down through that sandstone and granite was like searching for a coin in dried mud. I could press through it, very slowly, one tiny fissure at a time, but it took effort and concentration. And I didn’t know where I was going. The Disc gave me Sight without direction, it seemed, and no knowledge of the unknown without seeing it first. To reach a hidden door that way, I still had to know where to find it. All the same, a tube of six sheets of parchment ‒ my first draft of a hopeful map ‒ hung on a hook in the workshop. I’d need to tell Rusper soon; he had to know what I’d discovered. And how, there was still that to explain.
At the gate of the gryphon courtyard, I found myself stopping at the stone birds.
Could it have tricked me? Or lied? The Disc was still such a mystery, but one I knew contained some . . . what? Will? If it had a will of its own, could it then have showed me things and places that weren’t real? Didn’t exist? Because, if it hadn’t showed me lies, then far more stretched under the fortress than the engineers’ Deep. And that made it, without the tiniest doubt, the handicraft of the Builders.
Wild possibilities firing my imagination, I got going again and made my way down to the Crop Yard. There I went to the Yieldmaster, who knew me well enough by now to let me sit inside her bivouac and snack on dates while she organised my people’s supplies. Like everyday, she burned the message on her brazier. From there I climbed the hill into the upper North District, through busy crowds. Buckets were everywhere I walked, and currents of water travelled over my head through the newly added aqueducts, bound for the reservoirs and collection points all over the city. The City Guildhouse was busier than usual; I drew my hood when I got there, ducking and dodging between the craftsmen.
The black-bearded foreman peered over his reading lenses: ‘Ekhin Flint.’
‘Ekh Edish,’ I greeted him.
‘No drafts today, boy. Ready tomorrow.’
‘It’s alright, I’m here for parts,’ I said.
‘Got a manifest?’
‘It’s in my head.’
‘Best be right then,’ he said gruffly. ‘Last thing I care for is a visit from the overseers ‘cos of some squirt who muddled their order.’
‘No sir.’
I ran off my list from memory, Edish moving among his shelves of crates and jars he knew by heart, sometimes dispatching an assistant into the adjoining storage rooms of his domain for something hidden a little deeper. ‘That the lot?’
‘And some sparts for Caliph Symphin,’ I added. ‘One quadruple lever-wheel, one pin-gear . . .’
‘Grade pin-gear?’
‘Uh, didn’t say.’
‘Well, if it’s anything to do with the lever-wheel he’ll be needing a forty, forty-five at a push. I’ll give him both. Khopan!’ He snatched the arm of a passing assistant—‘Pin-gears, forty and forty-five’—and shoved the youngster towards a downward-delving ladder. When the hand returned, it was with two intricate mechanisms of ball-topped pins; one slightly bigger, a little tarnished. Both gold in colour. ‘Anything else?’
‘A pair of . . .’ What was it again?
‘Sun’s climbing, boy!’
‘. . . tallan lenses?’
‘Couple tallan lenses!’ he barked, slapping another assistant on the shoulder. I didn’t know what these things were for, nor could I think of anything Rusper needed less right now than a pair of lenses. The foreman drooped over his tall counter, propped his own lenses on his head and rubbed his nose. ‘How’re those pipes, then?’
‘Bad.’ I shook my head. ‘Just two arterials holding pressure. That’s why Caliph Symphin’s connecting new aqueducts all over the city.’
‘Figured as much,’ he sighed, adding with bitter sarcasm, ‘Take it these scraps aren’t for repairs then.’
Trying not to look as guilty as I felt about it all, I smiled back sadly. Edish had hoped to see the Hub in all its glory when it was opened, and now already it was in ruins. Because of the Rath. And because of me.
Two dark cobalt lenses arrived on the counter and I put them into my sling-bag with the rest.
Traffic had thickened even more back at the entrance. As I tried to push my way through the press of moving bodies, I was nudged painfully under the ribs by a badly organised tool-belt, then almost struck across the face by an iron beam as it was turned. All down to aqueduct construction, I guessed, and squeezed free.
All it took was a quick tug while I was squeezing – I felt my sling-bag leave my grip. I made a lunge after its strap but the boy had it—one of the wild boys, gutterwaifs!—now zigzagging away through the crowds.
Both fear and anger boiled up together and so quickly I didn’t know which one was which, and I catapulted myself after him, yelling something like ‘Thief!’ I tried to zigzag the way he’d done, but two mules veered towards each other, forcing me back and around. ‘Foolish greenstring!’ a driver cursed me, but I was too busy making sure I didn’t lose sight of my bag.
There! He’d made it round the entrance crowd, bolting towards one of the street-side terraces. I glimpsed an opening—an outer atrium of the Guildhouse that had cleared for just a moment—and sprinted through it, vaulting tables, to stumble out the other side again.
As the waif bounded onto the terrace steps, I grabbed his shirt but it slipped right out of my fingers. He was fast. But I could be too and I wasn’t going to lose Pintle or Rusper’s parts to them, not them! When he got to the top of the steps, whacking my bag against the stone, I was right behind him, sandals sliding as I lurched to grab again. This time I got a better handful of his shirt and pulled him back, then quickly grappled his skinny shoulders to turn him round.
Big glaring eyes in sunken cheeks: not a gutterwaif. I let go of his shoulders as a big bubble of spit popped at the side of his mouth.
‘Jerms?’
He dropped my bag and ran for it.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
‘No, Jerms, it’s me! Wait, it’s me! Florian!’
I chased him down the length of the terrace but he was even faster now. Over the wall at the end, he jumped, slid down a merchant’s canopy and was back in the street before I knew it. I got to the end of the terrace just in time to watch his heels flick another dusty zigzag trail through the mid-morning traffic.
My people’s shelter was nowhere close to the City Guildhouse, I thought, as I watched him stop to catch his breath by a corner building. Hands on his knees.
He was talking, I saw. Talking to someone out of sight. A green-topped figure curled into view and looked directly at me. Wondering if I could make out the milky cataracts from here, I just stared back. Jerome didn’t look back at me though, as Loquar took him by the shoulder. Both turned away, around the corner.
----------------------------------------
For a while, the Builders’ dreamy maze of machines melted away. Jerome’s huge eyes took their place. I saw that spit-bubble pop over and over.
So he had escaped the waifs. He was thin, but not much thinner. Tanned as brown as any Vedan ‒ freckles all gone ‒ which must have been why I’d thought he was one.
But alive.
True enough, if there was anything Jerome had always known how to do much better than me, it was run, and now I wondered how I ever could have doubted that he’d made it. He and Con had known how to survive on their own long before I’d ever had to.
The sun was high. Slowly now, I made my way back through the Citizen District, between white, baking walls and up into the citadel gardens. One of the sparts in my sling-bag had broken on the steps, but I wouldn’t go back now. Besides, I could see the pillar of smoke climbing behind the sentinel spire: blue smoke to signal the end of council. Horses clattered in the courtyard while, from the colonnaded terrace came the hum of talking viziers.
I sat on the edge of a fountain. Nothing flowed out of the lizards’ open mouths, but a little leafy water was in the bottom of the basin. I didn’t mind that it was brown and splashed my face a couple times. Then watched the ripples repair the reflection of my face. Frowned at my hair. What had been a tufty black copse when I’d arrived in Antissa was now a thicket and a mess. I tried to press it down with water but even wet hands made no difference.
Why wasn’t I more relieved? I was relieved, wasn’t I? Maybe I hadn’t really worried in the first place. Maybe I’d known he’d be alright. He was my friend, though. My family. What was left of it, anyway. So why didn’t I feel more . . . happy?
Somewhere, a duduk was playing. The tune was sad, although the hedges all around me made it difficult to tell which way it came from. I closed my eyes and listened, not ready to go back to the Deep just yet. The warmth in my swathes, tempered just right from the mounting heat of midday, was now making me drowsy. The dreamy greenstone tunnel started to form again in my mind’s eye, tempting me to follow. Not awake and not asleep, I tried for several minutes, but the images were hazy; now almost as hazy as my earliest childhood memories. Again I wondered if I could trust them. Jerome, at least, was fully real, and now again his honest face surfaced through the half-imagined tunnels.
The music softened and then stopped. I opened my eyes, aware of muddled conversations somewhere else among the gardens’ leaves. I left the fountain and strolled the corridors of trimmed hedge, between the pink and white flowers, up and down the shallow steps. How long could all this green last now the pipes could hardly meet the city’s needs? Would it all die?
Green. I thought about Loquar. No longer Rusper’s assistant, he was still a city engineer. I wondered how the two had come to meet. Had Loquar saved him from the waifs, or had it been nothing but chance? It seemed like the old man had been waiting for Jerome after he’d tried to make off with my bag at the Guildhouse, so it wasn’t hard to guess what uses he was finding for my friend. My fast-footed, fast-fingered friend.
Why did that sting a little bit? In some way, at least, Loquar must be looking after him, and that was good. Was I jealous? Why should I be jealous?—I had Rusper Symphin and he was Viceroy, not just the Chief Engineer!
Ashamed to have even thought that thought, I tried to unthink it again.
Between a pair of rosebushes, I leaned on a stocky balustrade. Directly below was a balcony with another stonework pool, hemmed by ivy on the one side, with the Inner Wall straight ahead. A long-legged plover was perched at the pool, dashing its bill, and there was a woman veiled in black standing nearby. Her back to me, she stood overlooking the roofs of the city; the muffled humdrum of the districts wafting to meet her on the breeze. She was a mourner, probably. After the deaths in the attack, I’d seen many Antissan citizens in mourning.
Then a man’s voice: ‘Sinarre.’
The plover flapped and took off as a blue-and-white Shieldman appeared from the right. He strode onto the balcony, leading a man in a familiar dark blue gown and tallith. The woman turned her veiled shoulders and, on an instant reflex, I ducked into the rosebushes.
‘Vizier Basra,’ she greeted.
I stifled a whimper as thorns pierced me in the neck. They hadn’t seen me, not yet. But I’d seen her—the olive skin and black-lined eyes. Amyra.
‘A favourable turn,’ the vizier said.
‘And deftly played on your own part,’ she replied, her charm like silvery oil. ‘You see now what can be achieved when the First Circle is mindful of its influence.’
Snip-snip. Someone nearby, one of the citadel gardeners, was working his shears across the hedges. I couldn’t stay here, not for long.
‘Hm! The First Circle can hardly take credit, sinarre. The Viceroy gambled a great deal to appear before the Sanhedrin as he did today. The High Commander may have spoken in his stead while he sat silent, but the matter is all too plain and his affliction all too clear.’
Amyra made a musical sound. ‘Perhaps you should take greater care then, Basra. Symphin is shrewder than he appears.’
‘I fail to see how. He did not obtain the power he wields by ambition of his own. That medallion is a chain, an anchor cast about his shoulders by a ruler who commands . . . if you’ll permit me . . . digging as an answer to the threat of war, solely because the man heads the guilds. That is all. And what use to Antissa is a blind engineer?’
I shrank deeper into the leaves and biting thorns. Had I heard that right?
The shears were close. I drew my hood, alert to movements from the closest hedges.
‘None of course,’ Amyra said. ‘But his foibles are only as damning as the First Circle will permit. That is why you and your fellow viziers cannot allow complacency from the Caliphate. It did not escape my notice that dear, sweet Vesh had a heavy tongue. Is he in accord with our agreement?’
Snip-snip-snip.
‘The entire First Circle is in accord.’
‘Then our position grows firm. You may be interested to learn that I possess information pertaining to the Honorary Caliph’s most recent visit to the tower.’
‘Indeed?’
Snip-snip-snip.
‘His Majesty the Satrap has granted him ten days in which to right the disrepair wrought upon the pipeworks by the Ratheine attack. Then, on pain of public execution, the Deepworks are to recommence at triple the pace. Perhaps you have not yet had the pleasure of observing said disrepair, ekharan?’
‘I’m keeper of coin, sinarre, not an engineer.’
‘He will not succeed,’ she told him flatly. ‘Be it with eyes or without.’
‘Ten days,’ Basra mused.
‘Nine from this day.’
The vizier made a dubious noise. ‘Will not His Majesty have forgotten such a pledge by that date? What of the black moods, the hysteria?’
‘Well controlled.’ This in a different voice: the Shieldman. It wasn’t Jharis this time.
‘Beg pardon?’
‘Most crucial is the timing,’ Amyra cooed. ‘Remove Symphin now from his seat and we can but expect our next viceroy to be another asphalt-risen Guildsman . . .’
Snip-snip-snip-snap. Ahead of my rosebush, the garden shears poked out of the greenery at ground level. The gardener rounded the hedge and I darted from my hiding place to crouch behind a low stone bench. But it didn’t take me long to realise the man’s work fully absorbed him; he barely glanced up from the leaves. So, daring to step out from cover, I went and stood near the balustrade again.
Amyra was still speaking.
‘Of course, the Satrap is fickle. But, as the watchful eye will observe, the Sanhedrin is far fickler than he. To say nothing of Antissa and its people’s famously short-lived and temperamental love for heroes. That is but one advantage. It is within my power to ensure that His Majesty remembers his promise, just as it is in yours, esteemed First Circle, to rouse six caliphs against Symphin. Do not delay the inevitable, nor deny Vorth its rightful due. I have already given you all you require.’