Jenryn always put on her mask before taking off her clothes. There was no-one else in the room and she did not think there was surveillance, but it made her feel a little safer. The clothes she folded and placed neatly on the single wooden chair before she turned to the cabinet. The first few times it had taken a real effort of will to step inside, to push among the slimy green ropes hanging from the top. Even now their cold damp touch was unpleasant and the way they shifted and pulsed was repugnant. Nevertheless she stepped in, moving forward until completely surrounded by lucent dangling tubes. Jenryn raised her arms and began to dance. For half an hour she spun, writhed and wriggled.
It was hard work. The tubes were soft and pliable but it took effort to move among them, as it might take effort to swim among seaweed. They flowed over her skin, absorbing her sweat, rubbing like eager cats or excited octopuses. Jenryn pushed that image away – she refused to think of the tubes as tentacles. She kept dancing until her arms started to droop and her back ache, then pushed her way out of the cabinet. The tubes quivered and then fell slack. Jenryn reached up to turn a valve, letting a blue liquid flow down into a large glass vessel, then dragged herself across the room to where a battered tin tub stood on a patch of tiled floor. A jug on a shelf held clean water and she drank thirstily before sponging herself off in the tub. The cabinet tubes left no residue on the skin and absorbed all fluids; theoretically she stepped out cleaner than she had stepped in. She still needed to wash – she felt it removed something. The water was cold and the towel threadbare.
By the time she was dry and dressed the vessel was nearly full. Jenryn let the last drops fall and stoppered the neck, careful that none of the liquid touched her skin. The vessel was heavy; she held it in both hands as she carried it to the next room. There a bench supported a complicated apparatus, all fluted copper shapes, twirls and loops of glass. To one side wooden beads circled over a ceramic plate that oscillated in time with a pipe emitting coloured bubbles that rose to pop with a whiplash crack.
The alchemist who maintained the equipment had explained how it all worked; the fronds gathered motion and some impressions of the performer, while the charged sigils guided transformation in the the desired direction and then concentrated the result. Jenryn had tried to follow the technical jargon. When she asked if the the results would impel users towards cooking if she made cutting, stirring and kneading motions, the alchemist nodded.
“With the right sigils, yes. But who would pay? Few people have ecstasies over a hearth-stone.”
Jenryn had to stand on a stool to pour the blue liquid into a copper funnel, then fed a slip of red paper into a sloping glass tube. Valves were carefully opened and closed, one by one, to let the paper slide down until it touched a black spot. The paper was rapidly devoured, a green vapour was whisked away and a small yellow ball began a low droning chant. Jenryn slumped on a seat in a corner, closed her eyes and waited.
A flash of light intense enough to pierce her closed lids, accompanied by a short scream, signalled the end of the run. Jenryn pulled herself to her feet and crossed to the bench. The silver tray held six pink cubes – a good result, the more so as two were the deep rose of premium quality. Jenryn picked out the cubes one by one with silver tongs and placed each in a small wooden box. Again she was careful that there was no contact with her skin. Her mouth twisted; Ildigun was too mean to spring for a pair of alchemist’s gloves. The lids were secured with ribbon, tied neatly with a bow, the shade matching the colour of the cube. Two rose, three bright pink, one pale pink. Her day’s work was done.
Ildigun was dozing behind the counter when she came downstairs. Jenryn plonked the case on the counter, waking her with a start.
“Six total today, two rose,” Jenryn declared. Ildigun opened the case and counted the boxes, poking each one with an arthritic finger. She grunted, closed the case and fished silver coins from a drawer. Jenryn checked the total and put them in her purse.
“You can be here earlier tomorrow, maybe even squeeze in another session. You’re good at this girl, got the right figure and attitude and all. ‘Course you’d make more if you did a bit of selling, but you know that, right? Folks’ll pay more for these if they come with a name.”
Jenryn suppressed a shudder. She knew what Ildigun’s ‘selling’ involved, and had no intention of going there. Still, she could not afford to lose this job, so she just nodded, bade the frumpy proprietress a good evening and left. Outside it was late afternoon, the declining sun casting long shadows down the paved street. The Precious Flower Alchemist and Herbarium occupied a building of faded brick at the end of the main shopping district. Patches of plaster had fallen away, the corner bricks next to the alley were chipped and broken, a third floor window was boarded up, the sign was badly in need of re-painting. It stood next to an equally dilapidated laundry and across the road from a boarding house that catered to seamen and other transients. For all that, Jenryn knew it did a steady business; certainly the wares she produced must sell readily, for Ildigun was always urging her to do more sessions. They could not be too cheap either – aside from her own wage, Ildigun had to pay the alchemist to maintain the apparatus and prepare the substances that fuelled it. Ildigun discouraged contact between her workers, but Jenryn knew of two others. The acquaintance who had got her the job had saved enough in two months to buy passage across the Gulf to Brahnker City. Jenryn had a little set by, and had sent more home.
Jenryn turned left and set out. The walk to her own lodgings would take her across the shopping district, around behind the shipyards and up the hill on the north side of the harbour. Better-off people in Uoka lived on the south side, in tall houses with balconies and widow’s walks that they might keep an eye on trade. The middling sort had apartments above their businesses or small homes clustered about the stream that bisected the town. The houses of poorer folk rose up the northern hill in row after row of cottages packed together. Jenryn rented a cottage towards the top, just below the city wall. She kept a steady pace, for the shortest route went close to the main wharves. The streets around the drinking establishments there would be thronged with sailors, some drunk and many eager for company. She found the invitations, blandishments and offers that came her way an irritating nuisance, best avoided.
Shops were still open but traffic was thin. The cableway car that thrummed past on Water Street was half empty and Jenryn passed only four or five loaded lift-poles and a few sedan chairs carrying merchants to their north-side homes. One of the chairmen gave her an appreciative whistle, earning a rebuke from the woman he towed. Jenryn had applied for a job as a chair-puller – it was light work, outdoors and paid reasonable money, but vacancies were few and mostly went to kin. She turned on to Former Royal Street, where official buildings vied with temples in dignified splendour. Past the House of Arbitration, the temple to Selm of the Waters, the ancient Town Moot-Hall with its guardian statues so eroded by time that it was hard to tell what creature was represented, past the platform from which official pronouncements were made, past the chapter-house of the Pilgrims of Virtue.
Jenryn gave this last building a look that mingled regret and resentment. It was only a few months ago that she had had a position and a future with the Pilgrims. A postulant was not yet a member of the order, nor in training, but her foot was on the first rung. Six months of good behaviour and attention to her duties and she would take the preliminary oaths. A safe position, reward for all her mother’s calling in of favours, her father’s truckling to the village council. Who knows? In a few years she could have risen to housekeeper, even steward. The Pilgrims did not teach the higher levels of craft to women, but she would have glimpses, and had begun to learn some basic patterns. All gone, her future blasted in an instant. She recalled that afternoon. There had been rumours of difficulties, of the seniors frowning over accounts and heavy missives from distant Paghin Paail. The Chapter-Knight had called them all together, told them without preamble that the chapter-house was to be closed and all Pilgrims re-assigned. She had been told she had no claim on the order, and granted a small sum from their grace. So much for their devotion to their Path. Deceivers.
Jenryn shook her head. She came past this place several times a week and each time it evoked the same sentiments. She had to let go. That future no longer existed; she would have to find another. She picked up her pace, the unwelcome memory leading her to again think again on her future. Her present job paid better than most unskilled work – enough to pay the rent and send something back to the village. She could milk a cow or a goat, get sheep into a pen without fuss, plant and weed, had some craft of cooking and cleaning, knew the usual household alchemies. Not skills in demand in town. A month as a barmaid had convinced her the pay was not worth the hours, the propositions, the requirement to deal with people. Jenryn was not a people person; she preferred her own company. Most of all, she preferred to keep her body to herself. She had tried kissing a few times and felt nothing but flesh rubbing on flesh. Other people seemed to like it, but it was not for her.
Here was the turn into Wharf Street. Jenryn skipped along head down, curved around a knot of drinkers blocking the walk and collided with a torso coming the other way. She yelped, staggered sideways and would have fallen but for a strong arm. Jenryn steadied herself and stepped back. The torso and arm belonged to a muscular young man who gave her a friendly smile. The muscles were easy to observe, as he wore an open shirt, short sleeves and tight trousers. Dark curls, braided in two tight rows, a bronzed complexion and clear brown eyes completed the ensemble. Jenryn braced for the inevitable open admiration. She knew she was attractive – lots of people had told her so, almost always as part of a try at getting physical. As far as she was concerned, it was a useful body, and why people got excited was their business. She did not care for the attention it generated.
The young man offered a pleasant apology, blaming himself for the mishap, and made to leave. His manner was so open that Jenryn kept the encounter going. She might mostly prefer her own company, but that was different from having no friends at all.
“Well it was my fault too,” she offered. “I was in a hurry to get through this place and didn't look where I was going. I’m on my way home,” she added.
The young man raised his hands. “No harm done. I might see you round here again but for now I have to start my shift at The Lonely Python.” He waved a vague hand at an establishment further down the street, where a gaily-dressed crowd spilled on to an outdoor area. Jenryn took in his dress, demeanour and the reputation of his place of work and joined the dots. He would not be attracted to her that way.
“I'm Jenryn.”
“Guesne,” he returned. “I have to go but I’ll be here a bit earlier tomorrow.” He gave her another smile and left. Jenryn went on her way, stopping at the cook-shop at the foot of the hill to pick up the food she had ordered that morning. The two small clay pots and the cloth of warm flat-bread swung by her side as she made her way up the steep street. The cobbles were frequently interrupted by steps, the stone dished in the middle from the passage of countless feet. There was no course of the black push-stones that kept lift-poles in the air; if you needed a chair you had one carry you along the wall and then walked down. Not that chairs came this way often. Jenryn turned off into her little lane, walked along to her row cottage and stepped up on to the porch. She would go inside later; for now she would eat her dinner in company with the glorious view.
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The wooden bench was comfortable, the porch sheltered from the wind. It faced west and a little south, and from up here she could look out over a great stretch of blue water and away down the coast, headland after headland until they became lost in the haze. White and dun-brown sails dotted the blue, many and small close-in where fishers were returning with the day’s catch, fewer and larger further out as ships made their way down the gulf to all the ports of the Green Sea and beyond. A two-master showed flashes of red bottom as it heeled over, leaning into the northerly wind. Bound where? The Haghar coast? Great Daruz Alman? The Rai Harbours? Jenryn had dreamed of travel, once.
She shrugged herself free from dreams and dug into the food. One pot held a rich bean stew, the other spiced greens with white cheese. Cheap food, but healthy and quite tasty. She was scooping up the last of the stew with a corner of flatbread when her neighbour popped his head over the dividing wall.
“Jen, heard the news?” Freiye’s wrinkled face was alive with mingled concern and excitement. It was probably the dang-bats again, thought Jenryn. Freiye plunged on “I’m moving, going to live with my niece down the coast. She’s coming to help me pack day after tomorrow.”
Not the dang-bats. Freiye had been havering about moving for months, torn between the deep-worn grooves of his life in Uoka and the care and comfort of his remaining family. He maundered on for some time about the arrangements in train, Jenryn listening with half an ear. She almost missed the blow, buried as it was among a mass of reminiscence.
“Wait, what did you say about the cottages?”
“Made my mind up for me it did. The stingy cow” (their mutual term for their landlady) “is selling the whole row. Some down-town fat-arse has bought it all up; wants to build himself a place with a view. We all have to be out by month’s end.” Freiye grumbled on about the iniquities of the upper classes while Jenryn gave herself over to worry. Could she wrangle her deposit from the tight-fisted landlady in time to put it towards another place? Could she find another place within three weeks? This cottage had been a rare find, with its great view, quiet, a rent low enough that she did not need to share. Jenryn could move into some hostel down-town, with only one room to herself and half a dozen other people using the facilities. It might be cheap but the prospect was deeply distasteful. She would start looking in the morning.
* * * *
Two weeks gone. One week to go, her deposit was still with the landlady, she had not found another place and Ildigun was ever more obnoxiously pressing. She had shared a few talks with Guesne and felt he was enough of a friend to lay out her situation over a cup of tea. He was sympathetic and had even gone so far as to offer to let her stay at his place for a few nights if she could not find anywhere else. It was kind of him, but it was not an offer she wanted to take up. For one, it could only be temporary and, for two, his housemate was an enthusiastic collector of sexual partners. Guesne had mentioned this in passing – “she brings someone new home practically every night, and sometimes it gets a bit noisy.” For Guesne this was just a mildly irritating quirk; Jenryn was more judgemental, for the Pilgrims would not have approved, and such behaviour would quickly set her village in an uproar. Also she hated the idea of lying on a couch listening to screams of ecstasy or whatever noises people made in the throes of passion. Even a hostel would be better. Her job was distasteful but at least it was solitary.
Her mood as she climbed the stairs to work was a mix of despondency, frustration, aversion both to her work and her possible housing choices and irritated contempt for the greedy, the careless rich and the ill-mannered. In this mood she put on the mask, pulled off her clothes and stalked into the nest of tubes. She danced out her anger, her revulsion, her regrets, her wish that some better future open to her. When she finally emerged she was wrung out, and sat on the battered chair for a time before she washed and dressed. The glass jar was close to overflowing, the liquid a blue tinged with purple. She carried it next door, set the apparatus in motion and rested. The flash and scream roused her from a light doze, and she crossed to see no fewer than ten cubes in the tray. Two were deep purple, three were rose, three pink and two a light green. Odd; she had not seen purple or green before. There were no ribbons to match, so they must be rare or previously unknown. No matter – they were cubes and Ildigun would pay for them. Jenryn put them all into boxes and went downstairs.
Ilidigun peered at the strange cubes. “Never seen anything like those before. What did you do, girl?” Jenryn protested that she had done nothing out of the ordinary; if there was a fault it had to lie with the alchemical machine, not with her.
Ildigun grunted doubtfully. “Can’t say as what these’ll do. Can’t pay for them. And maybe the others is tainted too, so I’ll make those half price.”
Jenryn was not going to let this horrible old hag cheat her out of her wages. “Rubbish. You agreed to pay for cubes – one archer for each rose, half that for any other. There was no discussion of what colours the others could be, and you can take that up with the alchemist. You owe me six and a half for these. Pay up.”
Ildigun straightened out of her habitual crouch. “’Pay up!’ Who are you to talk to me like that? Come in and and think you’re too nice to do the real stuff, and now you’re telling me what I’ll pay? You’ll take what I said or get out.”
“I’m out then,” said Jenryn. She snatched up the case from the counter. “If you’re not paying for them, then these are mine.” She left, ignoring Ildigun’s screeches. She was a block away before the shakes set in, and the worry began. Would Ildigun go to the watch? The cubes were not illegal, but they were not approved. Jenryn had the sense that Ildigun had connections on the shady side of Uoka. Maybe someone would come looking to teach her a hard lesson? Jenryn let her mind wander to the ways that could go and quivered. She picked up the pace, then slowed as she remembered that Ildigun knew where she lived. Could she go home? What to do with the cubes? They were worth at least twice what she was paid for them, but did not know where Ildigun sold them, and shrank from hawking them around the waterfront. It was with all this on her mind that she trotted down Former Royal Street and on to Wharf Street. She was a little earlier than usual. Guesne was sitting at a table enjoying a beer in the afternoon sunshine. He raised a hand in lazy salute, then frowned as he took in her worried face.
“You look as though you found a demon in yesterday’s porridge.”
Jenryn collapsed into the empty chair and spilled out her day. Guesne listened without interrupting, then offered to escort her to her cottage to pick up what she needed. She could stay the night at his place and they could make plans in the morning. At least it dodged her immediate worries, so Jenryn accepted. An hour later she was sitting on his dingy couch, listening to cooks shouting and dishes clattering from the restaurant downstairs. The smell did not improve things: the place served vinegar soup, spiced buns and shrimp rolls, heavily seasoned. Jenryn nibbled on the meal they had collected on the way and worried.
Guesne would not finish his shift until midnight or later, and had told Jenryn not to wait up. The noise from downstairs was dying down when the apartment door opened and a woman of Jenryn’s age breezed in. She checked at the sight of Jenryn sitting there, legs drawn up, staring out the window. Jenryn turned her gaze away from the darkening sky, took in braids dyed green and purple, a heavy cotton shirt and leather trousers. This must be Guesne’s housemate; Guesne had mentioned that she worked as a junior carpenter.
“I’m Jenryn. I’m in a bit of a fix and Guesne offered to let me sleep here tonight. I hope that doesn’t bother you?”
The other waved a nonchalant hand. “That’s fine. For a moment I thought Guesne had found a special friend, but then I remembered he swings the other way. My name’s Frule. I’m just dropping some things off and changing and then I’m out again. I’ll see you later if you’re up, or maybe tomorrow morning.” With that she went to her room, came out again in an artfully torn top and a skirt slit to mid-thigh and departed with a casual wave. Jenryn sat there until it was full dark, then put herself to bed on the couch, emotionally worn-out. She slept through until morning, undisturbed by Guesne and Frule.
The morning brought no clarity. Guesne and a friend collected the remainder of Jenryn’s possessions from her cottage – a few clothes, some pots and other utensils, an armful of bedding, a bag of odds and ends. All together it was a light load for two people. It was very little more than she had arrived in Uoka with. Should she go home to the village? Her parents would be disappointed, the elders derisive, and her old circle of friends and acquaintances have moved on. In a year or two she would be expected to find a steady partner and a niche in the settled life of the community. Jenryn did not want that. Even the lowest person in the village did not lack for food and shelter, and she did not mind hard work. What she minded was social disesteem and, even more, the weight of expectation. The young men and women of the village would want physical relations and Jenryn did not. She was free from that sort of desire, and found the whole thing intrusive, messy and well, unnecessary. The restrictive views of the Pilgrims had suited her very well.
At least here in town everyone did not know her. In fact, she had made very few acquaintances. The senior members of the Pilgrims had gone back to the Brahnzhever, and the juniors drifted away to other callings. Jenryn made a conscious effort to pull her mind away from the past and focus on the present. It did not help much, so she went out and bought bread and vegetables. If she could not decide upon tomorrow, she could make lunch today. Guesne and his friend told her she made a good salad and went off to work. Jenryn sorted through her meagre collection of belongings, thinking that there really was not much she wanted to keep. Here was the bag she had lugged from the village to Uoka all those months ago. What if she were to throw a change of clothes and a few other things into the bag and just leave?
Where too? Now she put her mind to it, she could choose from the whole of Reghen, from Cape Braise in the far south to the Rai Harbours. She could pick a direction and just walk. She had enough money for several weeks, if she was careful. On second thought, would there be dangers? Wild beasts? Feral people? What if she fell sick, or had an accident far from help? She was undecided when Frule made her mind up for her. She brought home not one but two partners, and they all enjoyed themselves loudly until late in the night. Jenryn tried holding the blanket over her ears, and then the blanket over a cushion. When they finally gave up (or out) she got some sleep, only to be awakened again by more of the same. Jenryn lay rigid as the sated crew staggered off to breakfast and work, then got up and stuffed the essentials into her bag. Guesne could keep, sell or throw out the rest. She was going to leave today. She weighted the case holding the cubes, then added them to the bag. Even if she only got what Ildigun owed her, that would pay for another week on the road.
* * * *
It was a week later and Jenryn wondered why she had not taken this leap before. The first few days had been tough – she had thought that her ‘dancing’ had kept her in condition, but apparently not. Luckily the main road north ran through a country of low hills, taking each rise in gentle curves and each fall to a valley in a long sweep. It was a soft country, a country of winding rivers and wide fields, tidy woods and neat villages. A few days of walking had improved her fitness, and now she took the slopes in her stride. Jenryn had been careful with money, keeping to water, bread and the vegetable stews that most inns offered as common fare, sleeping on a pallet in the woman’s dormitory under the eaves. The weather had been fine, with only one day of light rain. Her old cape had kept her dry.
Up to now the road had been well-travelled. Jenryn had been overtaken by riders on swift horses, light carriages drawn by paired cassowaries, runners drawing on craft to pace untiring for hours. She in turn had passed burdened pedlars, old folk out for a stroll, sturdy oxen leaning into the yoke as they pulled carts high-piled with sacks of grain. At least once each day a patrol of the Companions of the Road went by, smart in their red and gold uniforms, on their order’s mission of ensuring safe travel. The Companions did not appeal to Jenryn as a career, but she had to acknowledge their devotion.
At the next village she would have a choice of roads. The main highway swung east, well inland, before heading north along the valley of the Denboinne. Another lesser road continued north a little closer to the coast before going east to join the main road, while a third meandered through the hills to Terlwen, and then down to the coast at Pelsie. Jenryn had listened to the talk in village bath-houses and around the common rooms as she took her meals, and had made an effort to chat with fellow-travellers in the dormitories. Craft-guilds held the towns along the Denboinne in a tight grip, while the lesser north road was dotted with minor baronies whose customs ran from the distasteful to the bizarre. Lord Borle of Marrerwen and her cheerful populace enjoyed wearing only feathers all summer; the folk of Kanneres required all to take part in competitions involving greasy poles and ferret-dancing, while the affairs of the marshes along the Chill River were settled in muddy consultation with water-spirits. Jenryn decided to take the hill road.