Libriam's marshes stretched endlessly on all sides of the small reed boat. A flock of white cranes exploded from the reedy grasses nearby. Hassani jumped, laughed, and smiled as her startled tension released. This long boat trip from Libriam's Thorn to the Annalis served Hassani perfectly: a slow time spent swatting bugs or in brief exchanges with the terse, swarthy man poling the craft.
Space and time to plan her next steps. And spend as little time thinking about home as possible.
They slipped around a few wallowing passenger barges heading to or from the Thorn. An occasional ConMach fast courier glided past on its single paddle wheel, the slight discoloration in its wake slowly shading back to vibrancy. Otherwise, most activity worth watching consisted of long-legged birds fishing, marsh snakes twisting through the reeds, and innumerable insects zipping about.
If not for the humidity and growing expanse of welts on her skin from bug bites, she wouldn't have minded another day or two in transit, but the Annalis complex's wide sprawl grew too quickly on the horizon. When they bumped against the sagging docks, Hassani tipped her boatman with a small coin and clambered from the craft.
She slung her small pack over her shoulder, tucked Deai's battered sword into her belt, and carefully picked her way along the boardwalks. Past experience told her that even with constant maintenance, the walkways rotted rapidly in the moisture and heat. Plunging through a weak spot into the murky water was an experience she bore no desire to repeat.
Locals paid her little mind, busy tending their fishing nets or hauling papyrus bales and bushels of rice. Her formal Inviolate robes drew little attention. At this, the bureaucratic heart of the Dynasty, the Annalis saw dozens of messengers, Inviolates, scholars, merchants, Kin, and even the odd Dynast come through daily.
Unlike the reed huts of the locals, the Annalis compound's architecture consisted mostly of deep red, rot-resistant baryan wood from Libriam's southern forests. The structure's pyramid-roofed central building loomed over the town clustered in its shadow, the complex's sprawl reaching towards the horizon in either direction.
The massive Skeinry squatted in the sunset, its ugly gray-red bulk hulking between the Annalis and the marsh. Endlessly-streaming traffic flowed through it as waves of dispatches, reports, inventories, requests, requisitions, census documents, ciphers, and anything else that could be sent by wyre flooded in, spilled onto papyrus, parchment, paper, clay, or wax, and trundled to and fro by the cartload.
A pair of bored, miserable-looking Keens sweated in their hulking armor beside the Annalis' towering main doors, patches of drained gray staining the walls behind them. A wave of her Inviolate Vial let her pass without question.
As always, the contrast between the damp, boggy heat outside and the dry, cool air within shocked her. That and the black tile stretching in all directions within the massive entrance foyer.
Doors big and small punched holes in all three walls excepting the one behind her with its massive, lone doorway. Every other exit led into the labyrinth of the Annalis. Though some lay at ground floor, more led away from the three stories of stairways, balconies, and landings lining the walls. The vast space bustled with scribes, pages, laborers, servants, slavants, slaves, the odd guard or legionnaire. And bureaucrats. Bureaucrats spanning every size and description. An abstruse system of haircuts and wigs marked their hierarchy with some association between longer, more elaborate hair and higher rank.
Food carts served fish cuts or stew in well-worn wooden bowls, crunchy herb-roasted beetles and dragonflies, snake skewers, papyrus roots, rice balls, noodles, wine. Locals sat eating or stood talking about the carts while green-tarnished bronze statues in the dozens served as landmarks and gathering points, dwarfing everything else on their plinths of fine black marble imported from Shale.
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After her first trip, Hassani gave up on learning her way around the ever-expanding, constantly-remodeled and -repaired Annalis sprawl. Befriending someone who lived inside and enlisting him to serve as guide during her visits proved a far more efficient strategy. She'd memorized a path to Goboro's dormitories and relied on him for the rest.
Given the early hour, his cell-like room's emptiness came as no surprise. She retraced her steps to the massive foyer. There, she ordered noodles and breaded fish from her favorite cart and retired to her favorite statue to eat. At the feet of some ancient Dynastic general wielding a broken spear atop a the heaped corpses of some forgotten last stand, Hassani ate, watched, and thought.
Thought as much about work and as little about home as possible.
She failed completely. Her mind returned over and over to that final sight: flashing lightning casting garish highlights on her husband's curled form, Avani huddled over him to protect him from Hassani's blood-spattered fists. Hassani's intense competitive streak pushed her to the top contenders in anything she put her mind to, but she'd never hoped to win at 'worst possible family life.'
While she sat, men representing diverse ranks, professions, and degrees of confidence made approaches in various shades of subtlety but an equal degree of success. She longed for the affection, abandon, and sexual satisfactions that her marriage failed in every possible way to provide, but she knew from other Inviolates' bragging that many considered easy infidelity a perk of the position. How could a verse-bound mate ever hope to discover affairs sketched across the margins throughout the entire Book?
As miserable as Hassani found home life, her integrity and Denault's apparent faithfulness armored her. Every hopeful found only firm, polite rejection in Hassani's presence.
Judging by the uptick in activity and the twilight pouring through the expensive glass skylights, returning to Goboro's apartment might bear fruit but she figured she'd be more likely to catch him coming here for dinner.
Lost in thought, Hassani failed to notice the young man seated on an over-sized bronze helmet sculpture nearby until his humming broke through her reverie. Sighing and collecting her things, she prepared to shutdown this latest doomed suitor. She waited for the inevitable approach, but the man merely sat beside her sipping from his clay bottle, spearing fish chunks with a skewer, and humming a tune she couldn't quite place. Not wanting to encourage him, she looked him over surreptitiously.
Long, brown hair falling over tanned skin. Not uniformed and unctuous like a bureaucrat. Not dark enough to be Kin. Clothing simple, loose, and matching the local style but with scattered scarlet and mustard hints accenting field-worker drab greens and browns. Dressed local but not local. Insulated against the cool air by several layers. From a verse with a cooler climate? Possessing good taste in clothing or perhaps owned by someone with such taste. Delicate bone-structure cast a vaguely-effeminate profile yet muscles filling out his long cotton tunic evidenced hard work at something.
Against her better judgment, she found herself intrigued.
Except he didn't say anything or even notice her. Though he nodded to a few passers-by who made eye contact and waved to someone in the distance once, he merely enjoyed his simple fare while humming a baritone melody barely audible over the rapidly-swelling din.
Just when Hassani decided she'd misjudged his intentions, he stood and turned. Perfectly-straight, white teeth flashed. His brown eyes met hers just long enough to tell her the smile was for her alone.
Her heart skipped a beat.
By the time she'd recovered enough to say something, he was gone, vanished into the noise and commotion.
Confusion, annoyance, disappointment, and nervousness clashed with excitement and the unbidden desire to see him again. See him to crush his intentions and make clear her unavailability, of course. Forcing herself mentally back to business, she climbed higher on the sculpture to scan for Goboro.
He spotted her first and hallooed. Hassani returned his excited wave, realizing only as she climbed down that she'd looked past him twice in her survey of the crowd. However much she liked the portly scribe, she barely felt his enthusiastic hug or heard his joyous welcome patter. Her eyes wandered the dinner rush, ears seeking the tantalizing hint of a hummed melody.
In vain.