STORY: LOSW part 28
G.Howell
Here's the next installment in the ongoing Rris saga. Just so you
know, this episode contains some sex (tastefully done, I hope) so
anyone who doesn't like that kind of thing can read it with their eyes
closed.
Begin LOSW part 28
The carriage's iron-rimmed wheels squealed on the
cobblestones as it turned a corner, sending its occupants sliding
on the upholstery. We grabbed for the hand holds to stop
ourselves slipping across to the other side of the car. Mai hissed,
"Leather! Fabric would have been fine, but no, they have to be
[something] and use leather."
I listened to her half-hearted mocking tirade against the
coach's designers and grinned into my hand while the carriage
rocked and jolted its way through the narrow streets in the
southern quarter of the city. I recognised the area: not too far from
the Thieving Cormorant, or Mai's place for that matter. And she
was still smugly coy about refusing to tell me where we were
going.
There was a lot of activity outside when the carriage
finally stopped. Through the window I could see Rris street
vendors bustling by, carrying trays or pushing carts laden with
their wares. The air was filled with the hackle-raising sound of
many Rris voices raised in competition with each other. Mai
patted my leg, "We get out here."
'Here' was a narrow, winding side street taken over by
the morning market. Shops spilled out into the throroughfare, the
traffic of furry figures bustling around stalls and awnings and
shop windows. The smells of cooking food, garbage and animal
dung hung in the air between the walls that rose above the street
to where eaves almost closed overhead. That familiar ripple of
stunned silence spread away from Mai and I as we made our way
up the cobbled street, the usual babble rising behind us. The
owner of a stall backed away with it's eyes wide enough to show
the white around them when I stopped, my eye caught by it's. . .
his wares: carved wooden bowls painted in bright geometric
patterns. I almost touched one and the stallowner dropped his
jaws in a primal hiss, one hand coming up with claws extended.
"You won't do much business with an attitude like that,"
I said and had the dubious satisfaction of seeing the Rris freeze
with a comical dumbfounded expression before Mai caught my
arm.
"Stop teasing," she chided as we continued and the
commontion picked up behind us.
"Hey, he started it."
And she slapped my arm, chittering. Our destination was
just up around a bend in the road. Mai led the way into an
umbiquitous dark tunnel passing through to the central court.
This was smaller than the cloistered atrium in her building had
been: little more than a light well with doors around the ground
floor and off a second-floor balcony above us. The staircase up to
that balcony was stone, worn blocks that looked a lot older than
the rest of the run-down building around us. Perhaps part of some
old structure long overgrown by the rest of the city.
Mai stopped at a door and slapped her palm aginst it. For
a time nothing happened. She leaned out over the balcony to yell
up, "Eserét! You mange-taken rat! Travellers seeking lodging."
Eserét. . . I knew that Rris.
Another pause, then a muffled voice and clattering of
claws before the door was opened on to a steep staircase. Eserét
blinked out at us, dressed in an apron that at some time in the past
might have been sacking. Now it was spattered with psychadelic
smears of paints and other colorful material and getting grubbier
as he wiped his hands on it. "Huhn, you could have knocked," he
said to Mai, then past her to me: "Ah, Mikah. This will start the
neighbours talking."
"Well, we could have wrapped him in a carpet," Mai said,
"But I wasn't so sure he'd like that."
"You thought right," I said.
Eserét squinted at me, then snorted. "There's no point
giving them more trails to chase after. My threshold is open,
please."
I didn't recognise it as 'come in' until Mai started
following Eserét upstairs.
------v------
The loft room was almost a stereotypical artist's pad.
A cluttered space directly under the peak of the roof.
The sloped ceilings were plastered, the cream plaster discolored in
places, completely broken away in others. In one corner stood an
unmade bed, a iron-bound chest similar to Mai's at its foot. A
windowed cupola looked to the south, the shutters cast back over
a vista of sky, tiled rooftops and chimneypots and providing
ample light for the table and easel set up before them. The subject
was a still life: an old chair and a bucket standing on a drapery
cloth. Stacks of frames with stood against the walls, some with
canvass already attached and being stretched ready for use,
others just bare paint-spattered wood. Charcoal sketches were
tacked to the sloping ceiling: pictures of skylines and roofs and
still-life arrangements of geometric odds and ends and Rris
models. The few vertical spaces carried paintings, often
completed versions of the sketches. Among them were scenes
from the city, the skyline, a craftsman (person?) at a table, the
docks, a ruined tower bathed in twilight. . . all in the Rris
stylistic
motif.
The breeze blowing in through the open windows was
cool, but not unpleasant. I could foresee the place being freezing
in winter. A canvass was set up on the easel, paints on the table
alongside. On the canvass a chalk preliminary had already been
sketched out: a faint tracing depicting the old chair and bucket
with the window behind them. The smears of test color along the
frame edge were still wet. And a pair of Rris watched as I looked
around, one of them with his ears flicking back and forth in his
efforts to keep them up.
"Familiar to you?" Mai asked me.
"It brings back memories," I said, looking over the
material on the table. Rocks and powders, various roots and
plants and oils, pestle and mortar. Literally making his pigments
from scratch. The brushes looked expensive. Back home a good
horsehair brush could set you back forty bucks, were they as
expensive here? Off to one side were a few sheets of rag paper
covered with charcoal sketches, similar to the images stuck up on
the walls. The charcoal sticks lying in a small wooden box looked
hand-carved.
"You know what those are?" Eserét asked, watching me
intently.
I gave a quick smile: "Charcoal. I've used them. I haven't
had to make my own paints though."
A snort and he looked at the mess on his hands. "You
aren't missing anything."
I gestured at the sketches. "May I look at those?"
A hesitation, then he said, "Go ahead."
Nice paper. I noticed that as soon as I touched them; the
rag had a weight and texture you didn't find on mass produced
stuff. The drawings weren't bad, if busy. Several sketches were
jigsawed onto each page: He obsiously hadn't wanted to waste
paper, trying to make as much use of the space as possible. A
study of a cornice was bunted up against a sketch of a stevedor
straining under a load of fishing nets. No fixative, so lines were a
little smudged. And the perspective was odd: that pinched field of
vision peculiar to Rris artwork, an alien point of view.
"These are good," I said and Eserét visibly puffed up.
"He shows that he has taste," he said to Mai.
Modest, too. I smiled slightly and laid the sketches out.
"These are for a painting?"
"A."
I studied the sketches, then the rough laid out on the
easle. "They're. . . realistic? I mean, this is what they really look
like?"
Now his fur bristled again, although not with pride. "This
isn't the daubing of an apprentice. Of course it's realistic. Would
this be in such demand if it wasn't?! "
"I didn't. . . That wasn't what I meant. It's just that your
art. . . I mean Rris art, it looks different to me. I think we see
things
differently."
"What?" Now he looked confused.
"Like your pictures?" Mai ventured, then at Eserét's
confused expression elaborated. "I've seen pictures done by
Mikah and his kind. They're. . . odd. You find the same with
ours?"
I'd never considered how they saw my pictures, the clips
on the laptop. "Yes."
"Hhnnn," Eserét watched me. "Odd? In what way?"
"Why don't you show him," Mai suggested and at our
look nodded toward the paper and charcoal. "If that's all right. We
can pay for any materials."
And Eserét gave me a narrow-eyed look for a second,
then flashed a predatory grin, "Ah, it might be interesting."
It didn't take long for him to shift his present canvass
aside and set another one up. I looked at the subject, the old
chair, the cloth and the backdrop of the city through the windows
behind, and frowned. I frowned: it needed something, but exactly
what I wasn't sure. I bit my lip and looked around the sparse loft
until I saw what I needed.
She noticed my stare, cocked her head and said,
"What?"
------v------
Mai sat in the sunlight, eyes half-closed in the warmth.
Her tail flicked lazily a couple of times, then she scratched at her
shoulder and shifted a bit. It didn't matter: I'd already sketched in
a basic impression of her.
The charcoal was awkward, much coarser and messier
than pencil, but it felt good to be able to get my hands dirty again.
Eserét watched as I worked, roughing in the basic composition
and construction, then proceeding to add the detail. He asked
quite a few questions as I sketched in the construction lines, but
for the most part he just watched, occasionally giving voice to
thoughtful growls.
And for the most part I forgot he was there, just
concentrated on Mai and lost myself in the play of light and
shade, the relationships of space and angles. It's the fundamental
secret of drawing, the trick that so many people miss: the act of
actually seeing what's there. It's not just looking at the scene, but
seeing it as a whole, the way the elements interact with one
another, comparing proportions and scales and textures. An
exercise I find akin to meditation, a time when I'd lay out the
illustration board on my desk, put on some tunes and pick up a
pencil or stylus and create something.
A time that was in the past and a world away, but I felt
an echo of those moments that afternoon in that loft studio. Just
for a few moments, before reality snapped back and I was drawing
a grey-furryed bipedal lynx dozing in a chair. Hovering at my
shoulder, Eserét asked another question about the perspective.
Perspective, world-view, relativity. . . it was all a matter of
perspective. To them, my work appeared odd. Not exactly
distorted, as far as I could tell, but arraged in a way that just
seemed. . . unnatural. That was as close as Eserét came to
describing it to me. The lines didn't flow where he expected them
to. And the detail I added: he thought I was making it up when I
sketched in a weathervane on a distant rooftop.
Mai stirred and slitted an eye at him, "Why not trot on
over and have a look then?" she asked. "It'll be there."
The Rris artist looked a bit put out. He opened his
mouth, then frowned and snapped his jaws shut, huffed
something to himself and looked askance at me: "You can really
see that far?"
"Yes."
"How?"
"My eyes are different. I mean, they're good at different
things than yours. I see still objects further than you can, I think I
see better small detail and color."
"Color?" he asked, looking puzzled. "How can you see
better color?"
And that trail led off into a whole other neighbourhood
of questions, and that led off into a session of mixing paints. I
never realised there was so much involved in simply making a
primary color, especially from scratch: Grinding and pulping and
mixing powders. I'd seen chemists go through less to fill out a
prescription. The end results were the primaries and a range of
other hues. Eserét watched as I mixed a pallete, just a sample
batch.
"Hold," he told me. "Why're you doing that?"
"The colors. You've mixed three blacks there."
Three blacks. . . "No," I said. They're different."
"Different?" He asked. "They're black."
No. They weren't. There was a black, then there was an
ultramarine and dark violet, ranging around Pantone two-seventy
or two-eighty. I could see the difference, but Eserét insisted they
were black.
"Try this," Mai suggested. "Cut them into pieces, put a
mark on the back and see if Mikah can find the piece with the
mark."
Eserét squinted at me, then grinned and reached for a
knife.
About ten minutes later he stood back and looked at
three pieces of paper lying on the paint-spattered table, his ears
laid back. I hadn't got a single one wrong. "All right," he sighed.
"Either there's a trick there, or you can see something I can't." He
touched the pieces, one after another. "What does it look like?"
he asked.
"What? The colors?" I tried to grab the words, but
wasn't sure I knew them. In either language. "I don't think I can
answer that," I admitted.
He looked at me, then ducked his muzzle and snorted.
"Ah, foolish question. Shave me. . . new colors. Ah, what I'd give
to see them."
"There are plenty I can't see. Anyway, Rris see better in
the dark than I do. Also smell and hear better."
"Anything else you can do that we can't?" he asked.
"You'd be amazed," Mai chittered.
And Eserét's brow furrowed, then he asked me why my
face was changing color.
------v------
Rris. . . people. . . stared openly as we left Eserét's
building. Nothing new. It was almost possible to ignore them as
Mai and I walked through the narrow streets and alleys that were
so prevalent in this quarter of the city. Pedestrians moved out of
our way, females grabbing their cubs as we passed, a few
questions shouted out after us. We both ignored them.
"You enjoyed that?" Mai asked me.
I looked down at my hands, the stains on them. "A. It's
been too long since I held a brush."
"You're quite good. I think you've got Eserét worried."
I let slip an involuntary grin. A passer-by recoiled. "I
don't think I have the time to compete with him."
"A? And I think the artists Guild might have something
to say about it."
"Would they let me join?"
She hesitated and turned to study me, "Is that a joke?"
I felt slightly insulted. "I was just wondering."
She blinked and scratched at her neck. "That. . . I don't
know what they'd say. I'm sure there's nothing written against
such a thing. I'm sure we could ask."
And it didn't take a lot to read between the lines.
Doubtful, the answer to that was, very doubtful. "I'm sure their
expressions would be something to remember," I said quietly and
Mai almost laughed, then maybe caught something in my tone
and ducked her head. Around us, her kind stared at me and
shifted out of our way. I felt an familair pang and sighed.
Overhead, far above the tiled roofs, the rectangle of sky
visible between the wood, brick and plaster walls rising above us
was turning to the pink that heralded the end of an interesting
day. A lot of those not-so-important questions had been
answered and those revelations might go some way toward
helping me understand my hosts.
I glanced at the alien female at my side.
Or perhaps vice versa.
We ate out that evening. There wasn't any shortage of
stalls, peddlars, and shops where one could buy food, and Mai
knew the good places. From a small shop that with a distinctly
pregnant Rris behind the counter we brought pastries, similar to
spring rolls with a soft outside of rolled dough and a mixture of
steamed meat, vegetables and spices inside. Mai asked the
shopkeeper what herbs were used before buying and I didn't
recognise the names, but Mai thought they were safe enough.
They certainly tasted fine to me. I polished off three of them.
A couple of blocks from there, among twisting streets
and alleyways, Mai led me through a small lopsided doorway into
an old stone building. Huge flagstones paved the floor, ruts worn
in them from the passage of time and countless alien feet.
Overhead, barely, blackened ancient rafters braced the ceiling. Off
to the left were barrels laid on their sides. I'll call them that,
despite
the fact they'd be big enough for Mai to stand upright in. She told
me to wait there, then ducked off along a dim hall.
I waited, a bit uneasily. The place smelled of old wood
and smoke and alcohol. The barrels were sealed, without a tap, the
words pokerworked into the front unfamiliar. An unfamiliar Rris
pattered out of the shadows, froze with an audible gasp when it
saw me and bolted. I listened to claws spattering off into the
distance, cut off when a door slammed.
I sighed.
Five minutes and Mai was back, carrying a dusty black
bottle and a spring in her step. "All right?" she asked.
"Fine," I nodded and looked at her new acquisition:
"What's that?"
She held the bottle up to the light, cradling it in both
hands. There was a crest on the glass. "I thought we could do
with something to drink."
Oh, differences. You couldn't just run down to the 7-
Eleven for a coke. Water was cheap, and dangerous. Wine was
probably the safest drink around, but to actually buy it from the
vinters. . . "Isn't that expensive?" I asked.
"A," she said, then waved a shrug. "I thought. . . well,
this is supposed to be a good vintage. I heard that you had a
taste, so I thought you might be interested."
"Mai. . . " I looked at her anxious face and chuckled,
gave a slight shake of my head, "it wasn't necessary."
"No," she admitted. "But I wanted to."
I reached out to carefully touch her shoulder and she
didn't flinch, just smiled. I remembered the shocked expression on
a fleeing Rris and stroked the fur under my fingertips, just a
couple of times. "Thank you," I said, then looked around. The
area seemed vaguely familiar. "Where are we going?"
"I thought my place would be closer." She didn't look at
me.
And a flash of what'd happened last time. "Oh."
Getting darker now. The shadows lengthening amd
melting together. No streetlights, so some avenues were black as
pitch under the eaves of overhanging buildings. I stuck close by
Mai's side, trusting her to be my eyes in the gloom. Occasioanlly
we passed Rris who'd hurry about their business and from the
surrounding buildings came the faint sounds of people going
about their evening business. In the hearts of those buildings,
through gateways and brick tunnels, I could see lights flickering.
Rris homes: sheltered, intensely private, turn a blank facade to the
world.
Mai's building was the same: a dark facade broken by the
slits of small windows high up in the walls. Lights glimmered at
the end of the tunnel, just a couple of small oil lamps that flickered
in the breeze. Barely enough light for me to see my hand in front
of my face as Mai opened the door into shadow. Her room
seemed. . . different that night, and it wasn't just the fact she had
a
new matress there. Maybe it was the silence of the place: it was
lacking that underlying backdrop of drumming on the roof, the
hiss of drops on the tiles outside the window. The air was warmer,
without that cleansed freshness that the rain had brought with it
that night.
It was a clear evening. Through the window and above
the rooftops the stars were becomining visible as the final twilight
died, the light faded over Shattered Water. Mai and I sat in
darkness, leaning back against the wall as we sipped at a
surprisingly good year and watched the heavens, talking. Not
about anything in particular, just a quiet, comfortable
conversation.
"You know what they are?" came up, Mai waving her
mug toward the pale specks far away.
"The stars? A," I nodded and sipped.
She waited, then chittered and nudged me. "Go on?"
"Oh. Oh, they're suns. Like our one, but a lot futher
away."
"Suns?" She looked at the glittering flecks again. "You
mean there're other worlds like this?"
I looked at the silhouetted profile of the Rris beside me.
She caught the movement and glanced at me at my expression,
and her ears went back. "Huhn, of course. I forgot. Sorry."
"No," I sighed and turned back to the night sky. "Don't
be. I don't know if they're. . . quite the same sort of thing." I
raised
my mug again and realised it was empty. I didn't know I'd drunk
that much. Mai passed me the bottle.
"You really miss it," she said as I poured. It wasn't a
question.
I put the bottle down in easy reach and sipped,
pondering. "I don't know that I miss it. Not the world itself," I told
her. "The people, a place where I'm not. . . what I am now. A place
where I can be myself, live my own life, my friends, Jackie; those I
miss."
"Huhn," came the low response. Beside me, the
silhouette raised its mug but didn't drink. I saw her finger toying
with the rim. "Your female friend. You had cubs? You've never
mentioned."
"Kids?" I shook my head. "We'd been considerering. . .
joining." Their language has no word for marriage, never has and
never will. "I never asked her. I mean. . . there was no reason not
to, I just never. . . I guess I never got up the courage."
"Courage?" The Rris looked at me and ventured a chitter.
"She was so terrifying?"
'Was'. God, that tense sounded so. . . so final. "Not her,
the idea. The commitment."
There was a moment of silence before she ventured, "I
don't understand. Mating. . . you were afraid?"
"It's slightly different from your kind."
Another moment's thought, then she hissed softly,
"Ahh, your kind, you stay together for life, don't you."
My laugh was a single, half-hearted chuckle into my
mug, then I shrugged. "For the most part. It's still a big step."
"A, spending your life with one person. It would be."
For a while we sat in silence, watching distant stars.
Beside me Mai was quiet, lost in her own thoughts, her eyes a
faint liquid glimmer in the starlight. I drank, the wine slightly
sweet
and warming from the inside. Strong too, I could feel the buzz that
lay like a muzzy blanket under my thoughts. I watched the distant
lights and thought back to a time when rain had poured outside
that window, and there was something I had to know.
"Mai?"
"A?"
I swallowed and pressed on: "Last time we were here. . . I
mean, what we did: why'd you do that?"
A soft exhalation. "Why?" she asked.
"Please, don't," I pleaded. "No games."
"A?" I saw her lean back, her head canted back to stare
up into the darkness of the rafters. "I thought. . . well, you were
frightened, upset. You just seemed so. . . vulnerable. I didn't want
to leave you like that."
"It was sympathy then?"
Her head turned, eyes flashing a spectrum sheen of
colors as light flickered and left them in shadow again. Then a cut
of her hand through the air: "No. It wasn't that. Not just that."
I cradled my mug, staring into the dregs as I remembered
the Rris back at the vinters, all those others. "I know Rris don't
find me attractive. People still run when they see me. I don't
understand why you're different."
A laugh, and then a leathery hand laid on my arm: a
touch that just tickled the hairs, then a gentle smoothing. "I've
spent a little more time with you. I've seen that there's a lot under
that surface. I've said you're not my ideal of a male. . . not on the
outside." A hesitation, then a chuckle, "Well, most of you,
anyway."
I gave her a hard look.
"Sorry," she chittered. "It's just. . . I never expected
something like that from you."
I felt the hot prickle crawling up my neck and shrugged
abashedly, hiding the flush behind the mug. "It was. . . a night of
surprises."
"A," she said and I know there was a smile on her face.
The hand moved and a single fingertip traced delicate sworls in
the hair of my forearm and she leaned closer: "And maybe we
could be a little more careful?"
I caught the hand, lacing my fingers between hers and
raising it between us: moonlight glinted off the tips of razor
cresents peeking from her fingertips. "Do you think you can?"
Her ears flicked and she bobbed her head. "I hope you
don't mind, but I borrowed these. . ."
Her other hand plucked something from her belt purse: a
small bundle like a deformed spider that the moonlight resolved
into. . . my gloves. I stared at them, at a loss for words, then
looked past them to her face tat might have been amused in the
dimness. "How'd you get those?"
"This morning." Her voice was a husky growl. "I didn't
think you'd mind."
And I stared back into eyes as black as the shadows,
visible only through the slight glisten in moonlight, and a thought
started to tickle the back of my mind. . . and was lost when the
Rris darted forward and planted a nip on my nose. Another on my
chin and I laughed and caught at her, feeling fur and muscle under
my palms while hers were fumbling with my shirt.
------v------
A moonlit face twisting and tossing in the dimness: her
jaws gaping, eyes screwed shut while her hands clenched at me,
the feeling of soft leather raking across my back while I pulled her
close and moved with her. The noise clawing out of her, a low
rumbling growl that rose, increasing with that wire-taut tension,
peaking in a ululating yowl that vibrated throughout her body and
seemed to fill the universe. . .
And sagged, panting rapidly and holding tight, moaning
something small and meaningless. And as I kept moving slowly, a
hammering I'd taken to be the pounding of blood, of my heart,
continued.
Someone was pounding on the floor, the moonlit dust
bouncing slightly with the bangs. I looked down at the heavy-
lidded eyes of the Rris below me and she blinked slowly, then
chittered. That set me off. I collapsed against my lover, buried my
face in her fur as I laughed uncontrollably. Gentle hands brushed
sweat-slicked hair away from my face.
------v------
My whistling echoed through the marble halls, an off-
key rendition of 'On Top of the World'. My guards hung back a
bit as we walked. Every so often we'd pass Rris who'd stop and
stare openly. At me or the noise that was so out of place in those
corridors, I didn't know, and I really didn't care.
It was a glorious morning. Sunlight streamed in through
the Palace windows, reflecting off marble and polished metal:
statues and carvings and ornaments. Outside the sun was bright
in a clear sky, promising a fine day. For all I cared it could've been
sleeting down and blowing a gale: I felt better than I had for a
long time.
Hirht and Kh'hitch were waiting for me in a sunlit
second-floor office, a pollen scented breeze blowing through. The
two high-ranking Rris looked up from the papers spread out on
the low table as I entered and both of them cocked their heads:
"Greetings, Mikah," Hirht smiled. "You're in a good
mood?" It was a question, and I didn't exactly answer it.
"It's a good day for it," I shrugged, gesturing past them
at the blue sky through the window.
"We don't often see you smiling. It's a change for the
better." The Rris king studied me for a second, then nodded
toward a cushion at a vacant place: "Please, be seated."
I did so and he laid a finger on a paper, sliding it toward
him to blink down at the figures scratched there. "Now, things are.
. . excited. Extremely so. I know the Guilds are clawing at each
other for access to some of the inovations you've made, as are
other countries."
Some of my good cheer evaporated. "That will cause
trouble?"
His muzzle wrinkled, v's marching through the fur
between his eyes. "Huhn, you've already caused more upset than
a spark in a gunpowder store. They'll want more, there's no doubt
of that, but I think they'll pay for it. Nobody seems to be willing to
start something serious. Some of your ideas have opened quite a
few new possibilites. Losing those, and the profits attached, are
not a thought they'd clutch to."
A bit of a relief. Perhaps the Rris knew me well enough to
tell that because Hirht watch me for a second before continuing:
"From from what I've heard the projects are doing very
well. Aesh Smither is well pleased with the results. I've been
informed the current project underway in the workshops is nearly
ready for trial runs. Within the next couple of weeks if there're no
setbacks. In the meantime, you wanted to see more of our land."
Kh'hitch leaned over his paunch to move another piece
of paper across the tabletop. A map of Lake Eerie, or their
facsimile, Shattered water and the immediate environs. "Chaeitch
was has been interesting in using his engines to move things on
land," Hirht explained. "There are some trial engines and the trails
they need at Blizzard's Coat, under evaluation by the Mining Guild
there. They haven't been all we hoped for."
I nodded. Those I'd heard about. The king glanced at my
face, then back to the map.
"Chaeitch feels the new engines, and your knowledge,
will make a difference. He thinks it's be best if you saw for
yourself what's been done there. So, you will be going on a short
trip; no more than ten days."
Will be going on a trip. . . My leash had been
lengthened, but it was still there. I tried to think of it as a
proposed business trip. And as he'd said, it would be interesting
to see more of the Rris world. My travel arrangements and
itinerary involved a boat as far down the Blizzard River as was
navigable. Blizzard's Coat had grown up as a sort of way station
between the upper Windswept and lower Tailtied. Now it was
prosperous port, receiving goods and traffic from the local
surrounds. Any shipping making the transition past the Blizzard
Falls had to be routed through the port facilites there, making it
the gateway from the upper to lower lakes. As such, it was a
bustling port and a rapidly growing town.
"Your boat will be leaving the day after tomorrow, the
weather willing. Chaeitch will be joining you, along with a
compliment of guards and a Royal deputy. Anything you may
want to take - clothes, food - will be provided, just ask."
Now Kh'hitch leaned forward. "Still, there is the question
of your. . . friend. Do you wish to take her?"
As if she were a possession. I felt more than a touch of
annoyance at that. "I don't know," I responded tersely. "Why
don't I ask her?"
Kh'hitch just cocked his head and watched me through
alien eyes. I didn't even know if he'd picked up on my rancor,
especially when he simply said, "Of course."
------v------
Two days later I stepped out of a carriage, the weight of
my pack hanging from my hand. They'd been worried about the
weather: they shouldn't have. The morning sun was already hot
on my shoulders as I stood and looked around at the bustling on
the docks all around me. Moored ships moved restlessly, shifting
and creaking, the forest of masts with their canopies of ropes and
sails and penants swaying ever so slightly in the breeze. My Rris
escort gathered around me, keeping their distance but obviously
uneasy at the attention I was drawing. On the shore and shipside,
eyes were turning my way, and when the carriage moved off with
a clatter of wheels and hooves on the cobbles, I started feeling
very exposed.
"Mikah."
I turned toward the shout to see Chaeitch stalking
toward me from the direction of the wharehouses and buildings,
cutting across the foot and vehicle traffic rattling up and down
the docks. A relief to see a familiar face. "You're ready, I see," he
said as he approached, cocking his head to study me. "Clothes of
your kind? You certainly stand out."
I looked down at myself. "They're comfortable," I said, a
little defensively. Well, they were. My boots, jeans and a t-shirt.
The Rris tailors could copy them, but they just felt. . . I don't
know. . .made for me. And as for the clothes Chaeitch was wearing
- a lightweight linen vest and a small kilt - I didn't think they'd
suit
me.
"Those are words?" he squinted at the t-shirt. "What
does it say?"
"He's never told me," another voice spoke up and we
turned to see Mai approaching, a small carpet bag slung over her
shoulder. Her face pursed into a smile at my unabashed grin, "It's
some sort of joke," she said to Chaeitch. "He'll have to explain
that sometime."
"I've told you, it doesn't make sense in Rris."
"Ai," Chaeitch raised his hand. "Sorry to interrupt you,
but there are people waiting for us."
I offered to carry Mai's bag and she simple gave me a
curious look. "It's not heavy," she said and kept walking. For a
second I stood there feeling stung, then a bit of a fool for
expecting courtesies I'd grown up with to mean the same to them.
The boat was what you'd expect the government to have
access to: a three-master, sleek, black-laquered hull with clean
lines and rigging, a vessel that looked built for speed and not
cargo capacity. Sailors at work along the deck stopped what they
were doing to stare as we approached along the pier. I flexed
suddenly sweaty palms on the strap of my pack where it was
slung over my shoulder and a hand patted my arm. I looked down
into Mai's reassuring face.
I was glad she'd said yes.
------v------
Midday sunlight sparkled and glittered on wavelets
whipped up by the breeze that made the green sails overhead
billow and snap. High above the masts, birds wheeled in the
bright sky, their cries audible through the creaking of timbers and
ropes, the slapping of water against the hull of the Kestrel, the
shouts of the Rris sailors. Off to the right, starboard, lay land.
Here the forest was broken by cleared land: farms, hamlets, a
couple of villages. Away in the distant lakeward haze was the far
shore, almost imperceptibly drawing closer as the lake narrowed
into the Blizzard River.
It wasn't going to be a long trip, nowhere nearly as bad
as the one that'd brought me to Shattered Water. Blizzard's Coat
wasn't far: about forty kilometres from the capital. We'd been
given a small, stuffy cabin belowdecks, but Mai and I stowed our
gear there and spent most of the trip sitting in the sunlight on top
of the central cabin. Talking, relaxing. She gave me a lazy
impromptu lesson in the names of various parts of the rigging,
and I let her try my sunglasses.
"Peculiar," she chittered, holding them in place and
tilting her head to survey our surroundings. They really didn't fit
properly: her muzzle was too broad for the nosepiece. I lounged
back against the mast and smiled.
"An understatement," said a voice at my shoulder.
Chaeitch joined us, sitting crosslegged on the warm wood of the
cabin roof. Grey skin showed in the shaved sigils on his arms and
I wondered if he'd have to worry about sunburn.
"Finished?" I asked him.
"A. Thankfully. Huhn, politics: unpleasant but
necessary." He brushed at the fur of his forearm, smoothing it out.
"What's Hechic like?" I was referring to the deputy, our
government representative.
"Ah," He waved his hand in a shrug, "He knows his
business, but that would seem to be what he lives for."
"Not a barrel of laughs then," I said and both Rris barked
sudden amusement, drawing a startled glance from a passing
sailor.
"Another of your kind's sayings?" Mai asked when
she'd stopped chittering.
"Hey," I shrugged. "We've got a lot of them."
"A," Mai took off the glasses to bob her head in an
exagerated nod, handed them back to me as she said to Chaeitch,
"Just when I think I know him, another surprise gallops over the
hill."
And he glanced at me, flicked his ears in an expression
that might have contained amusement: "So I've heard. "
He wasn't. . .
She gave him an odd look. "You've heard?"
Now he smiled again and gestured at me. "I work with
him. It seems like every day we uncover something new."
He was. The bastard.
"Familiar feeling," Mai agreed.
"Hey," I protested, "I am still here, you know."
"Uhnn," she mock-growled in return and twisted,
flopping backwards to lie with her head in my lap, blinking smugly
up at me. "It's hard not to notice."
I stroked her cheek, then scratched my fingers through
her warm fur: like petting a giant cat. Chaeitch cocked his head at
the familiarity, but Mai stretched out in the sunlight and rumbled,
"I could get used to this."
"This doesn't seem too new to you," Chaeitch said and
caught my look. "I mean, this," he gestured at the shipboard
activity around us.
"Huhn," she moved my hand to a point just behind her
ears. "Oh, I saw plenty on the trip to Shattered Water."
"A, I didn't think you were local," he said. "Where're you
from?"
"Tae'sashi," she said. "In the southern reaches. Not a
big place, that's why I came to Shattered Water. I had some ideas.
. . anyway, I quite filled my eyes with ships on that trip." She
gestured at the masts and sails billowing overhead. "Still, this is
an improvement over the fishers and coal barges."
Chaeitch chittered. "A royal schooner. . . I should hope
so."
------v------
We reached Blizzard's Coat at about eight o'clock that
evening.
Well before what I'd known as Goat Island, the ship
broke away from the main channel, into the artificial breakwater of
the Blizzard's Coat's upper docks. The town clustered around the
harbor, the stone quaysides lined with warehouses, stores, silos
and storeyards. A steam-powerd tug hauled us into dock, the
small engine stuttering and puffing smoke from the funnel, the
crew calling directions as they slotted the Kestrel into a vacant
berth among other vessels of all manner and description.
Someone was expecting us. I could see the cluster of Rris
waiting on the dockside as ropes were thrown out and made
secure. Official-looking types, in bright clothing and fur dye with
jewlery sparkling in the evening light. There were guards there as
well, waiting with musket longarms crossed over their chests.
Behind them on the quayside sat a pair of open-top carriages with
mounted troopers on llamas stationed around them.
Hechic was the first of the passengers off. A short Rris
with russet fur and three silver earstuds through his left ear,
flanked by a pair of guards he strode down to meet the reception
comittee. There was a short exchange before our own guards
escorted Mai, Chaeitch and myself down the gangplank. The
waiting Rris stared at me. One took a step backwards and I could
see guards' fingers flexing on their weapons. Hechic murmured
something to the Rris waiting in the center of the group and that
individual's ears twitched as we approached.
"Your lordship," Hechic was saying as we approached.
The title 'lordship' isn't entirely accurate, but it's the closest I
can
come to their term which is a male of rank with overtones of
physical as well as social domination in it. "Your lordship, these
are Chaeitch ah Wilder of the Wilder Workshops and the special
guest you were informed of. His name is Mikah, a. . . h'mahn, and
an honored guest and client of the Palace." This last he said as if
driving home a point. Whatever his motives, the other got the
message and inclined his head slightly:
"Welcome to Blizzard's Coat. I trust you journeyed well."
Hy'itchshaetie ah Metari, the town's lord mayor. I
remembered that from the briefing I'd received back in Shattered
Water. His family was an old one, well established, wealthy
enough for a Metari to hold the title for several generations. A
good mayor, by all accounts: stable, just, protective of his
territory and ruthless in pursuit of his goals. I followed Chaeitch's
example and bowed, just a slight bend at the waist. As a
representative from the king, Chaeitch was technically of equal
ranking, and the papers he carried guaranteed cooperation from
our hosts, but he still showed polite deference to the mayor.
"Very well," he replied amiably. "We couldn't have asked
for better wind or weather. Made excellent time."
"Good to hear," the mayor replied and cocked his head at
me. "Now, is everything I've heard about this one true?"
"That would depend on what you've heard, sir," I said.
Metari flinched, a jerk of his head and flaring of nostrils.
"Ah, you do talk. I hadn't been sure whether or not someone was
playing games."
I didn't smile when I said, "I'm almost used to it."
He blinked, cocked his head, then turned his gaze on Mai
standing at my side. She hastily bowed her head and the mayor
twitched an ear and then turned back to Chaeitch, as if she was
nothing to be concerned with. "I suggest you start your work in
the light tomorrow. For now I can offer you a roof, a meal and
somewhere to sleep."
"And they'd all be most welcome," Chaeitch replied. The
mayor turned a shoulder to me as he fell in beside Chaeitch,
escorting him toward the waiting carriages. I shouldered my pack
and started to follow when Mai laid a hand on my arm, stopping
me and peering up at my face. Her expression. . . anxious, worried.
. . I wasn't sure, but I understood what she meant. And in reply I
just shrugged, then patted her shoulder and fell into step with her
behind the other two.
And as the carriages rattled along cobblestoned
docksides, the escort cutting a swathe through the evening traffic
and activity, the evening air carrying scents of fishing nets, water,
and the elk drawing the carriages, I caught a first glimpse of what
we'd be working on. The rails were rickety looking things, very
narrow gague. Through the open gate of a yard I saw a couple of
flatbed cars shunted aside; they didn't look as though they'd been
used in a while. Nearby was an engine: a boiler on a flat rail car,
pistons powering driving wheels that must've been taller than I
am. Barely harnessed power straining to be unleashed it wasn't. A
trio of Rris were standing around. I saw one take a hammer to
some component, the ringing of metal on metal carrying until we
were out of earshot.
End LOSW part 28