Chapter 22
“How far is it?” Jallin asked.
“Oh, not far, the way we’re going.”
“Why don’t you get Stasser to help you?”
“You didn’t see him down in the hospital? He was there when I went down there last time. Wasn’t he there with you?”
Stasser? In the hospital? That boy on the bed was Stasser? He had caught the bloodlung and was already in the hospital? Jallin turned toward the door, but Counselor Yubrin came and put his hand on Jallin’s shoulder and led him away.
“Yes, that’s Stasser, alright. I take it by your expression you did see him. He caught it from some of his gang, we think. He’s got a full dose of the bloodlung. Who knows? He might have gotten it from being in your house. We don’t know how he got it, but he got it. He doesn’t have long to live, I don’t think. The bloodlung is a peculiar judgment. Some people, like your mother, last a long, long time. How long was it for your mother? Seven months? Maybe eight, all totaled. I know we were coming to your house for around three, when she couldn’t get out of bed anymore. And Eja got sick with it and she’s still not dead, and she hasn’t had a dose of medicine for it at all. But then you have Mrs. Golgottia, whose daughter was dead in perhaps two or three months, and Mrs. Golgottia herself, who didn’t last the winter, really. And Mrs. Reggle comes and goes. Today was a good day for her, but some days we are amazed she hasn’t gone.”
Counselor Yubrin led Jallin to the front door of the house and out it again, still talking as though he were recounting the tales of ancient characters from a book he read and not people Jallin knew.
“Stasser was up and robbing people just a couple weeks ago, and now he’s in the hospital. He came to us when he first started coughing up blood. He said he vomited red stuff all over, and he wanted to know what to do about it. He had nothing to give a mercelian. You know about that, don’t you? Those mercelians will help you if you’re honest, but if the world has made you steal to live, then they’ll just as quickly arrest you and turn you over to the putrights. And if you’re found to be sick, they’ll lock you in a quarantine box and experiment on you. Did you know that? At least here, people are treated and helped until the disease takes them or releases them.”
They were out in the little culdesac out in front of the temple. A few rotten houses lingered in front of Jallin in the chilly spring afternoon like drunks.
Jallin could not get the man’s arm off his shoulder, and together they went towards the alleyway where Eja had relieved herself a while back and from where the drellorin had come. Jallin had not been down this alley before, and it was not the way to the north fence area.
“Is this the right way?” Jallin said. He really didn’t care to hear any more from Counselor Yubrin. He thought the man’s voice sounded…cold…or snobbish…or maybe like the voice of people who know they are cheating or lying.
“For someone like me? Yes.”
“Someone like you?”
“I am a wizard, Jallin. Didn’t you know that?”
“No.”
“Well, I am, or at least I usually can be. I studied at the university for a little while. I still do when I can get the money for it, but access to their facilities doesn’t come cheaply. We’re going to a travelhouse, so we can move quickly now.”
“A travelhouse?”
“A way to travel more quickly through Sarkoshia. Only aethren can use them. Aethren and people with aethren. Are you with me today, Jallin?”
Jallin nodded, more at the idea of using a travelhouse. No one had ever offered to take him through one of these. He wanted to hate Counselor Yubrin, but at that moment, he couldn’t find any anger. What was happening to him? Were they winning him with their promises? Reading? Running the hospital? Being trusted? Being a blessing? Using a travelhouse? Whatever they were doing, he’d go in a travelhouse and he would get what he could from them, then he’d leave them, then he’d get Eja out with him. They said she wouldn’t die from the diseases, that Trochaya had a plan for her, so he could wait until the best time to get her away.
Even so, he felt strange going with Counselor Yubrin. If he ran into Kir-Tuko, would Kir-Tuko be angry with him? What a stupid idea. Jallin shook his head. He didn’t speak, or ask any more questions, because he didn’t want to betray his thoughts.
But how did he not know Counselor Yubrin was a wizard? How did the man learn wizardry without anyone knowing about him being a Trochiabite? Jallin always thought the aethren were noticeable somehow. Jallin stole a sideways glance at the man, but he noticed and nodded with a smile back. Jallin didn’t look at him again. How did he not notice?
They passed an expensive jewelry store, and then a perfumery, and a fleahouse for getting rid of parasites and getting massages, a transporters guild, and a privacy shop. Jallin had never had the money to go into a privacy shop, but he knew what they were: places where people paid to be completely and totally alone, places where a person could say and do whatever they wanted and not get in any kind of trouble. Almost anything and everything went on in there, except for thievery and murder, and the putrights were contracted to stay out of the places. Narg and gincha guards paid the fare just like anyone else if they wanted inside.
But both the putrights and the guards lurked nearby, when they could. Jallin saw the narg who’d carried Eja home that night after the drellorin attack here standing near a street corner, just down from the entrance to the privacy shop.
This was Ka-Lura Square, a place where beggars and orphans were not allowed, unless they wanted to be caught and immediately enslaved. The putrights and nargs and ginchas were only one of the problems someone like Jallin faced in this place. Here, the Lar-Kirthoa watched and guarded, too.
The Lar-Kirthoa chased bandits and beggars and orphans for the fun of it, for practice, or to carry off and sell the unfortunate ragamuffin for quick money. If they witnessed a crime, they could arrest, judge, and even execute right then and there. Stasser said once he saw a Lar-Kirthoa take a man’s head off with one swipe of his sword.
Slaves purchased at the flesh ports ended up here for the better part of their lives and careers. High class brothels and rich gaming houses entertained silk-and-pearl string-wearing kinto-shah aristocracy and nobles.
Manufacturing guilds and processing markets poured smoke into the air through their chimneys, and Jallin saw, down a hill from where they crossed the street, an importing and exporting guild, bottle makers, bug farmers, fine clothing draped like fresh fish in front of stores, carpet merchants, pots and pans dealers, tinker’s shops, and water processors.
They passed by a counting house and a Kinga-Tonaolé, which was an office where experts of the law gave advice, and entered a labyrinth of homes.
Kinto-shah built their homes usually upwards. Almost any rich kinto-shah had at least one wooden tower peering over the fences surrounding their lots, peering down at the passerby like some huge flower growing out of a huge bed. Because kinto-shah had fur, the walls of the houses were usually quite thin, made from paper, swampstick, or waspworx. The slaves lived in houses either at the base of the towers or along the outer walls of the compound, so that gardens could be planted within. For a while after passing through Ka-Lura Square, Jallin saw nothing but walls and wooden fences on either side of them. The street seemed to bow to the rich nobles sitting at tables and looking down from open air pavilions atop their towers and pagodas. The kinto-shah, billowing in their flowing silken garments like flags of kings, who bothered to put down their bowls of fancy teas to notice them passing made their condescention palpable.
“Quite a few of these houses belong to the richest kinto-shah in Sarkoshia,” Counselor Yubrin whispered. “That one there,” he said, trying to surrepticiously point to a stone-walled house with two towers, “is a harem of one of the more powerful diplomats of the Frosomian Empire. The diplomat doesn’t live there, but visits quite often. No other men are allowed to go in there, or the Lar-Kirthoa inside will kill them.”
Jallin looked, and saw a single shaya in an open air room of one of the towers. She was painting a picture of swampstick, what some people called bamboo, and using long, slow, steady strokes to make straight up and down lines on the canvas. Jallin noticed a figure emerging where the swampstick ended in the picture, the figure of a kinto-shah reclining, only an outline where the paint didn’t go. Her ears were pivoted around so they opened towards the street, but otherwise, the woman took no notice at all of the passersby.
Emerging from the homes, the two travelers came to a little park, an open area where all manner of flowers grew, along with stubby herbs. And every single flower must have emitted a powerful, pungent aroma. So many smells, more than Jallin could possibly take in. Some of them reminded him of cooking, like garlic and onion and some of the herbs, while others put images of enchanted evenings with exciting and exotic woman in Jallin’s mind. It was a garden of smells, an entire garden dedicated to mixing and mingling scent, and each time a light breeze tilted through, it changed everything. Jallin wondered his head did not burst. How could kinto-shah breathe here, he wondered, but then again he found himself wanting to breathe out so he could breathe in again and again.
“Careful, Jallin. Don’t get carried away here, or you’ll find yourself waking up on the ground. Humans have done it before, trying to smell constantly, breathing too deeply. It’s quite a thing to come into a garden like this, but the kinto-shah love their smells,” Counselor Yubrin said, patting Jallin on the back.
“How do they stand it?” Jallin said. “It’s overwhelming.”
“Sometimes, it is overwhelming, but sometimes, as some of their philosophers say: ‘when swimming, it is easier to go underwater occasionally and come back for air than to always try to keep one’s nose up.’”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Sometimes, it’s best to just come and let yourself be overwhelmed, so that when you go back to your normal life, it doesn’t seem so difficult. I don’t know. It’s probably how they deal with being slaves. Come, there’s a ticket booth over here.”
“Ticket booth?”
“For the travelhouse.”
On the other side of the little scent garden, Jallin saw a stone wall built like no other he’d seen. These stones were polished and perfectly placed together, so tightly they almost didn’t have seems between them. Every so often a pillar stood and atop each pillar stood a peculiar metal structure or statue with parts jutting outwards in seemingly random directions and which seemed to balance at impossible angles. Magecraft, Jallin thought, the art of balancing and positioning objects to flow magic through them. One didn’t grow up in Sarkoshia without knowing something of magic, and he’d seen, once, a kunjelic university mage demonstrate balancing a sword on the tip of his nose, a dagger on each of his pointed ears’ tips, and bobble a book from one knuckle to the next like a coin.
Through the wall was a large, wrought-iron gate, and on each side of the gate was a Lar-Kirthoa, both completely armed and armored. Jallin’s heart thumped in his chest. He’d never seen Lar-Kirthoa in full regalia like these.
Both wore bright-blue polished metal breastplates. Their helmets looked like heads of wolves or foxes with dark eyes, having plated horn like structures for the wearer’s ears to be protected. Long, corrugated plates of shining metal hung down from their hips to guard their flanks.
“These are members of the Righteous Blue Ocean’s Fist,” Counselor Yubrin explained. “One of the three Lar-Kirthoa orders sent to Sarkoshia to represent the emperor here and the emperor’s interests in this district. And here’s the ticket master.”
Jallin was so interested in the two Lar-Kirthoa and their magical wall behind them, he didn’t notice at first the little official-looking human seated behind a table in front and just to the left of the gate. On the table before him was a large metal plate with intricate carvings all around the side.
“Only aethren and their guests may go through,” the man said, as though he’d said it a hundred times in his life. Probably, he had. “Put your hand here.”
Counselor Yubrin placed his hand on the metal of the plate and removed it, leaving a glowing handprint. Jallin stared at it for a long time, even as the gateway between the Lar-Kirthoa opened, allowing them access to whatever waited beyond. The handprint changed color a hundred times, and Jallin wasn’t sure he even recognized some of the colors it turned before it slowly faded. It was like the spots he got in his vision when looked at a light too long.
“Come on, Jallin, we have to go inside now.” Maybe Counselor Yubrin paid, but Jallin was not sure.
Jallin eyed the Lar-Kirthoa as he passed, but they might as well have been statues. They didn’t even bother to flick an ear or nod. Were they asleep?
Beyond the gate was an open grassy field, and nothing more. From wall to wall was nothing but grass, and only one type of grass. The lack of variety was striking. Not a single weed grew here, not even a different type of grass, or low lying moss, or even lichen. Just the grass.
And in the middle of the grass was a hexagon lying on the ground made out of large, smooth, polished beams. Inside the hexagon was gray sand, as fine and powdery as sugar, but entirely gray.
“So, what’s this?” Jallin asked. He began to put his foot in the sand, but Counselor Yubrin held out his hand and hissed at him.
“Do not touch the sand until I tell you. Do not touch anything but the grass, and only touch that with your feet. I have to make the spell that takes us where we want to go. You might want to just stand over there and wait.”
“How long is this going to take?”
“It will take longer if you talk too much. I have to make some calculations. It is not easy to do, so please be quiet.”
From his pocket, Counselor Yubrin took a stick of ash and a little tablet of paper. Almost frantically, he began to write across the page. His hand scratched and scribbled, and when Jallin once looked over his shoulder, he saw all manner of intricate little swirls and circles and lines criss-crossing on the page.
Then, he put the tablet down on one of the stone beams forming the hexagon and knelt beside the sand.
“Damn,” he said to himself. He pulled the top-most page off the tablet and put it down. Then, he set about making another picture on the tablet.
“Did you do something wrong?” Jallin asked.
“Just a little miscalculation…er…I forgot something. I forgot that I would have to have two symbols, because you are with me, and I really don’t want you to be by yourself on the other side. That is, I could, I suppose, make a big symbol, one we could both cross over together, maybe, but…you don’t understand, do you?”
“Not really,” Jallin admitted.
Counselor Yubrin looked for something. He went over to a wall and found a large, metal stick resting against it. “You know, some of these places have people who draw the symbols for you, and that’s much nicer than this.” He brought the stick back and set about scratching in the sand with it. “You have to be very, very careful,” he said over his shoulder, “and I must admit, it is not an easy thing to do, and I’m not the best at it. That man at the gate is the one who would have drawn for us, but I didn’t have enough to pay for an advanced sketching.”
“Can you do it?”
“Of course. I just forgot how difficult this can be. Hmmm, let’s see.” For a moment, the stick hovered over what was like nothing more than a doodle in the dirt. Then, Counselor Yubrin set to work again, muttering to himself as he worked. “Okay, so, the roundtree, no, wait, no, the roundtree’s last. First, the spike, here, then the hook here, and…hoo…oh….” He stopped for a moment to close his eyes. He looked as though he was about to vomit. Maybe he was. “Dizzy. Hold on. Okay, hook, hook, snip, wave…damn….” He wiped his brow and closed his eye again.
“What is it?” Jallin asked.
“If you are not used to doing this, it can make you feel quite sick. At certain steps, you are between two, or perhaps even three, places at once, your mind’s there, and your body’s here, or vice versa or you are suddenly finding yourself as two people at once, in different times, doing the exact same thing. It’s very disorienting for someone like me, who doesn’t get a chance to do this often. Now, let me think, and be silent.”
After knowing him for nearly two years, all totaled, Counselor Yubrin was like a different person entirely to Jallin. Why would a wizard be a Trochayabite, anyway? Why would he have to be? Why wouldn’t he be rich and powerful? It didn’t make sense. But then, Kir-Tuko came to mind. Kir-Tuko wasn’t rich or powerful. He wasn’t even free.
Finally, Counselor Yubrin stood. For a moment, he staggered in place, but he made sure the tip of the metal stick did not go back into the sand. He held it out and told Jallin, mostly in gestures, to return it to its place on the wall.
Jallin went and got it quickly, before Counselor Yubrin decided to change his mind and do it himself. He almost ran into the wall for looking at the strange object, a solid piece of metal, likely iron, but with little rivers along the shaft, filled with peculiar-colored metal Jallin didn’t recognize. Whatever it was, it glistened and shimmered like oil on the surface of water. Jallin thought about whether or not he could sneak the thing out of the gate house once they crossed to the other side. Likely, guards waited on the other side, too, and this rod could not be hidden easily.
“Jallin, put it down,” Counselor Yubrin said sharply. “You are no longer a thief for yourself or your mother, or even for Eja. You are a thief for our lord and master, and he does not steal from Sarkoshia.”
Jallin didn’t want a lecture or sermon. He put the rod down and joined Counselor Yubrin at the hexagon.
“Now, all you have to do is jump over that symbol, but you cannot touch the symbol itself or the sand around it. Jallin, do you hear me? You cannot touch the sand.”
“What about on the other side? I can’t jump all the way across this thing.”
“No, just to the other side of the symbol. You can do that, right?”
“I need a running start,” Jallin said, backing away. He squinted his eyes, and he saw something. The air seemed…smeared somehow in the hexagon. “What’s going to happen? Is this going to work?”
“It’ll work. Just run and jump. You’ll be on the other side. At first, it will feel a little strange, though. You might be sick for a moment, but close your eyes and wait, and you’ll feel better.”
Jallin felt ridiculous, but Counselor Dursus was a wizard and wizards made portals to other places.
He ran.
For a moment, he forgot where he was and what he’d been doing entirely. How long was he really gone? His entire body was twisting, turning. Through one eye he saw the city, through another, he saw the travelhouse, and now, through both eyes, while both sights remained, he saw streets, buildings, people. He passed through them all, but didn’t move, or they passed through him, or both at the same time. He was upside down, right side up, facing in three or four directions. Then, he fell nearly on his face in some grass. He staggered and flailed until he nearly hit the wall. He did throw up.
He was back in the travelhouse again. Was it the same one? It looked exactly the same. The grass was the same, the hexagon was the same. He looked around and found a similar metal rod leaning against the wall. At least, it was in a different place than he’d left it.
A peculiar noise echoed through the travelhouse, and Counselor Yubrin stood in the hexagon.
For a moment, he leaned one way, then another, and even he closed his eyes and breathed a bit.
“I didn’t draw it quite right,” he said. “I should have paid more.” He wiped his brow. “I had to do it all in my head, and on that paper. That guide knew the pattern I think, and I should have paid him.”
“Weren’t you a guide? You said that, didn’t you?”
“If you think I could remember every symbol for every travelhouse in Sarkoshia, you’re mad. It’s not an easy thing, believe me, and a travelhouse actually makes it far easier than other ways. Anyway, we’re here, I think.” Jallin watched Counselor Yubrin look around, and he noticed it. Counselor Yubrin didn’t blink. It was the mark of a wizard, but something one never noticed unless he was really looking, and Jallin never really looked at Counselor Yubrin when he could help it. So, he really was one.
“Do you have to always use a travelhouse? I thought wizards could just go wherever they wanted.”
“Travelhouses are safeways. It’s like using roads. Some roads you don’t go down unless you’re armed for bear, and other roads are perfectly safe, well-traveled, wide open. Travelhouses are highways. Back alleys are always back alleys.”
Counselor Yubrin, apparently thinking Jallin’s questions were some kind of bonding, put his hand on Jallin’s shoulder. Jallin ducked out from under it. He almost apologized, and could not explain even in his own mind why.
“Since we’re alone,” Jallin thought to take advantage of this peculiar sense of…closeness…or whatever it was Counselor Yubrin thought was happening, “why are you a Trochiabite?”
The man pirouetted in place. He stomped closer to Jallin. “You’ve got a loud mouth, boy, don’t you. Don’t go around talking about things like that out here. People listen to fools.”
“I’m not a fool, and you won’t tell me what to say. Now, answer the question. Why? Why do you believe that rubbish?”
Counselor Yubrin stared down at Jallin, but Jallin stared back. But the unblinking eyes bested him, and he looked to the gate, where he thought he saw people paying to get in. They stood on the other side, and they didn’t move. Jallin found himself staring. The people outside stood in place and no one moved.
“Perhaps later I will tell you the answer to that question, but for now, we have something we need to do.” Now, he looked to the gate, too. “You’ve noticed. You must understand how dangerous traveling though the Sark is, Jallin. If two people were to cross paths, or even get close to one another, terrible things can happen, monstrous things. People get melded, split. I’ve even heard of soul exchanges and people being split into a hundred different dimensions, or being cast out of their bodies. So, time bubbles are made here by mages, some of the most powerful mages in the world, working with some of the most powerful wizards and artificiers together.”
“Well, isn’t that against Willeonis? What about that? Isn’t that what caused the Shattering, and the Qwadro, and all of those horrible things?”
“How do you know about that? What do you know about that?”
“I hear things. I’m not stupid. Well? What about that? Isn’t it the law that the aethren aren’t supposed to be together, aren’t supposed to work together?”
“Not exactly. Besides, the Willeonayan law apparently didn’t do too much for the world, did it? Let’s get out of here, while I’m still young.”
“What about the time bubble?”
“That doesn’t mean we’ve stopped living, has it?” Counselor Yubrin walked toward the gate.
“Well, doesn’t it mean we can talk a moment?”
“You want me to explain why I believe…what I believe…in a few minutes?”
“Is that all we have, a few minutes?”
“Just let’s go, boy. There could be…listeners…in here. You never know. You see that symbol over there?” He pointed to a peculiar carving on the wall, a circle with various swirls and strange angles, much like the symbol Counselor Yubrin drew earlier in the dirt. “That could be a portal for sounds or even sight to somewhere else. We aren’t the only things that can come and go from here, and Sarkelosh, the Lord Emperor,” he added reverently, “has very good eyes and ears.”
The world outside suddenly caught its breath and moved again. It hardly noticed either of them standing there at the gate. The ticket taker took something from Counselor Yubrin. The narg guards hardly noticed them long enough to nod their heads or grunt.
The travelhouse took them to a prosperous area of the city, very near the university, whose massive towers and buildings rose up like a monstrous mother dog in the midst of her pups. The brown, pleasantly-aged buildings were very like smiling grandmothers, pleasantly-aged, some gnarled and weathered down, but sturdy and warm-looking. This was not a place for food markets like the vin Sluska, nor slave markets like the flesh ports; this area served a different clientele.
Book sellers and paper presses and copiers fronted the streets across from taverns and inns, and even set up shops in the streets like the fruit venders. On the corner of one street was a general store, selling feed and seed, cages lined up along one side of the building containing an orchestra of different squawking animals, like birds and small rodents, reptiles, and gremlins and flusses. From where Jallin stood, he saw ropes coiled like snakes, tools leaning casually on walls, grain sacks, and white flour sacks like waiting puff balls.
Jallin did not recognize the sign of one shop across from there. It looked like the side of someone’s head, but with a funnel sticking out the top of it. He pointed there, like a small child with a parent, and asked.
“A memorist shop,” Counselor Yubrin explained. “Really, a guild of halfren and mancers, but the memorist is the real draw. Memorists pull up memories from your past so they’re fresh again in your head. It’s good if you are a student who’s trying to study for a test, or if you’ve lost something. They can even pull up memories you didn’t know you had.”
“What’s a halfren?”
“People like me, who never officially learned magic, but only learned a few good things. People in there can only do one or two things useful, if that at all. Mostly, they tell people what they want to know, but a few of them can do some interesting things.”
“Like what?”
“Like take away pain or make people fall into lust with you. Perhaps we can stop in and you can look around after our affairs are done.”
“What are we really doing here?” Jallin asked. He’d begun to suspect they weren’t really going to clear out an old lady’s house of her things. They’d need more people to help them, wouldn’t they?
“I told you. We are going to Mrs. Ruggles house to pick up a few things.”
“How are we going to carry it? Where are we taking it?”
“Back to the…house,” Counselor Yubrin stuttered. He nodded at a putright passing by them on a cart. Behind him sat a veritable mountain range of narg guards on either side of a line of prisoners. Jallin wondered what they would do with them.
“But why haven’t you already done it, if it doesn’t need wagons and things?” Jallin asked.
“Have you not enjoyed our little excursion today? Do you not wish to be here? I thought you would like to see a new part of the city, and be closer to the university. Do you want to go home?”
Home? Jallin didn’t really know what that word meant right now. It felt as though he’d been gone from his little cot in the hut for nearly a year. Perhaps it was the travelhouse’s effect on him. He still felt a little fuzzy from that.
“Well? Will you help me, or won’t you?” Counselor Yubrin stared down at Jallin now. His unblinking eyes felt piercing.
Jallin nodded.
They came to a row of houses attached to each other like a litter of conjoined infants. Obviously, these were of human make, their walls forming each other’s walls, as they descended down a hill. Several humans gathered around a wagon and hooted and laughed together, apparently sharing stories of a quiet, pleasant life not too full of the worries of the poor or the burdens of the excessively rich. A couple of children about Jallin’s age sat in the back of the wagon, and one of them petted furiously the head of a gep. They all wore the sturdy clothes of laborers and merchants and market people, the types clothes Jallin’s benefactors had allowed him to sample. Only, their clothes were cleaner, with fewer holes, and bore the stains of work, not the filth of wallowing in an alleyway somewhere.
When Counselor Yubrin and Jallin walked by them, though, they stopped and stared. Not all of them, but a few, bore suspicious, almost angry, faces. Jallin felt ashamed of something, but he didn’t know what, as though his unpleasant presence had been predicted. The children, taking their cue from the adults, also watched.
“What are you doing here?” a large man with a round belly like the bottom of a cauldron growled.
“Small business dealings, Master Carrukson,” Counselor Yubrin responded evenly, even politely. “Nothing much which should concern you, actually.” Counselor Yubrin smiled at them and even waved. He took a step towards them, and waved with just his fingers at the children. “She’s asked me to put some affairs in order around here.”
When they were away, Jallin tugged at his sleeves. “What was that about?”
“Just some peasants being peasants, really. I helped Mrs. Ruggles in her time of need, and they didn’t like it. That’s all, like Counselor Dursus did for your mother. We are healers, Jallin, but we are also helpers. You might call us more ministers than anything. She was thinking about killing herself.”
“Killing herself? Wh…why would you stop her? Don’t…some people…believe she should die, since she’s got the…disease?”
“You’re learning to talk correctly, Jallin. Good. Yes, that’s true, but you must understand exactly what I mean about killing herself. She was going to subject herself to the experimentations of the aethren or the mercelians or the chirogans. She was talking to the apothecary about it, when I found her. She was going to let them pour their medicines down her throat, and let them take her blood, and carve her up, so they could find a cure for her, and maybe some of the others. Could you imagine that sweet lady on a table in some dungeon, carved apart like a fish?”
Unfortunately, Jallin did imagine it. Some dripping dungeon under the city, a table, and a woman split wide open with her guts out. He tried to shake the image away, but all he managed to do was remove the old woman’s head and put Eja’s head on her instead, then his mother’s. Why did his mind do such things?
“Wouldn’t that kill her? Wouldn’t she have died?”
“Maybe, but they would have done it for the greater good, wouldn’t they? After all, if one old lady dies, and they find a cure, wouldn’t it be worth it? Do you see now how he cares for us, how he helps us?” The man pointed upwards with his index finger. “He allows us to cure ourselves, to grow stronger, to live good lives, or die and be with the blessed in the Waiting Lands. And one day, when our bodies are no longer susceptible to diseases and death, when we’ve finally cured the last plague, coughed the last cough, he will save us, and make us new and happy here on this world. It’s just the rest of the world doesn’t know this, and we don’t have time to argue it out with everyone everywhere.”
They stopped in front of one of the long rows of houses that made a wall on either side of the street, at the bottom of the hill. Apparently their passing broke up the gathering up above and the people were dispersing from the cart. It was too early in the day for many people to be about here, except for servants and the occasional housewife. But this house had apparently stood abandoned for a while. The windows were dark inside and it might have done with some paint. The shrubs were too high and stabbed at the sky with a few wayward branches. The gardens Jallin could see were growing weeds.
Kir-Tuko would have had a fit to see it.
“Well, here we are, then. Mrs. Ruggles’ nook. She calls it her nook. She’s from lower Morrigar originally. She got dragged here by her husband trying to turn a prophet in trade. He ran a guild, where they extracted the mystroskus from animals. This is not an efficient way to get mystroskus, and the stuff you get from animals is used to only listening to those animals’ wills, but it is abundant this way, more abundant than other ways of finding it, and certainly easier than pulling it out of the air, from the Sark, or from underground. The stuff is hard to come by no matter what, but some of the best of it comes from just across the sea on the shores of Lakvia and Ezzeera, two of the most powerful allies of Sarkoshia.”
The lock and chain fell away, reluctantly and noisily accepting the key in Counselor Yubrin’s hand. Now they were in the garden, the unkept garden that grew a few things Jallin had come to be familiar with in Kir-Tuko’s garden, too. He had several rows of mizaroot, the seeds of which grew quick enough to stand and observe near mystroskus. The more mystroskus, the faster they grew. Jallin saw also some rusted metal cages and underneath peculiar, and very large, wilting plants with huge spiny seed pods. The two plants grew directly out of animal carcasses, the only remains of which were bleached bones jutting from rotten black pelts.
“Maceweeds,” Counselor Yubrin explained. “Very restricted stuff. You have to have a license to possess them.”
“So, what happened to Mr. Ruggles?”
“He’s dead. He died on one of his many missions to Terrilia. Mrs. Ruggles still has the deed to this place, but when she’s dead, they’ll likely burn up his house and this garden and take what they can out of here. That’s why we’re here. Mrs. Ruggles, may he bless her, has told us where her husband kept some of his old books and equipment and a few of his old things, and she has agreed to let us have them.”
Now, the house. It was very tight, like someone standing in a crowd without being able to move. A few windows peered down at them, waiting for them to come inside and investigate that ache it had in its belly.
Houses like these looked small, Jallin was aware, but they had deep roots and they made quite a bit out of space. And if this man had dealings with the university, he probably had a little extra space packed away somewhere. Jallin cracked his knuckles. He was about to enter the house of an aethren.
No comments:
Post a Comment