Loïc set down a thick wooden tray on the round table in the centre of the Governor’s study. On it were a pitcher of steaming water, a decanter of chouchen mead, and a halved lemon. A sweet, invigorating scent filled the room as he mixed them into a heavy cup which he placed gingerly between Vall’s hands.
She sat in a chair by the balcony, blanket wrapped around her shoulders, watching as the late afternoon sun burnished the walled city into a warm, rich brass. She seemed as immovable as a lowland boulderbush of resin-filled leaves and deep roots until she lifted the cooling cup to her lips and took a long, slow draught. That done, she sat still again for a long while, tears trickling down her cheeks and past her tight-lipped and lightly frowning mouth.
Laostic closed the door quietly behind him as he entered and engaged Loïc in a hushed, deliberate exchange. He rounded his desk, wrote down a few notes, and it was only as he dragged his chair a polite distance away from Vall that a note of hesitancy could be heard in his movements. Vall made to rise, but other than bidding her remain seated with a hand on her shoulder, it was a few minutes and a long look out at the city before he spoke.
“Please allow me to apologise for what happened earlier. Please, Vall. It was my responsibility, and my fault besides. I wanted you to go in without any preconceptions. To keep it free of any tampering on my side. But I should still have given you some idea of what could happen. And I should have stepped in earlier. I almost did, a dozen times. It’s just that–”
His fists bunched up and his head swayed subtly from side to side in a wholly uncharacteristic display of discomfort. The emotions had been pent up within him for so long that he could not keep the pressure from showing as they broke, cracking, to the surface.
“I just couldn’t bear to break his moment of peace. The first such a deep and quiet one in, well, let’s call them weeks. I flinched away from becoming the current which he had feared would pull the two of you apart. I felt it would set his hatred of me in tighter stone than the winds and rains of whatever years I have left to me could wear down.”
He withdrew into himself, and the wrinkles around his eyes bespoke great suffering. He didn’t seem to notice that he had started speaking.
“It seemed always so obvious to me that personal love was more a danger than an illusion. Was it this I was afraid of? There seems no way to untangle it, him, myself, or us. Sea Lords – which foreign soul possessed mine when I met his mother?”
He blinked back to himself, bit back his next words with his molars, and reasserted his control.
“That is to say – what happened back there is my fault, and mine alone. If you should wish to have nothing more to do with the matter, we would understand entirely. There would be no blame, and we would arrange some reward for your… time today.
“But should you wish to take this further, despite everything, then what we would have asked of you is to make contact with the Sunset Sect, and request their aid in finding some cure for the boy. You could appeal to their curiosity, their charity, whatever diplomatic designs or worldly desires they entertain. Just so long as they send an experienced adept to examine the young man. I’ll carry out the negotiations proper; so long as they display any willingness, bring them here and let me iron out the details.”
He blinked again, and noticed the rage which had followed the confusion. His attitude turned back towards the apologetic.
“I’m sorry. I realise that sending you from the tidal whorl into the deep-sea maelstrom must be the last thing you want. I have no intention of pressuring you into this. I only wanted to make clear what we had brought you in for in the first place.”
“Don’t worry about it, sir. I’ll go.”
When Laostic looked up from his creaking knuckles, he was shocked to see the same unflinching clarity in her eyes as he had seen that morning – only limned this time by the thin red lines running through the whites of her eyes.
“I want to go. There’s always dangers in a job – and now that I know about these new ones, I want to learn more about them, for the next time they come up. And I’m curious too, on top of being scared. But mainly, I want to help. The way things ended up hasn’t changed that. I want to actually help. Not just say some silly, empty words.”
Laostic found himself studying her again, and musing. Vall must have misinterpreted his silence, for she said:
“You can ask me again in the morning, if you think I may still be muddle-headed.”
The Governor shook his head.
“No – we gratefully accept. This will be the first official contact the city has made with the Sect, so there will be a few sensitivities you’ll want to be informed of. I’ll let Loïc fill you in later with everything we know about them. Their name, for one thing – their location, the more realistic-sounding rumours, and so forth. As well as anything more you might deem relevant about the boy’s…”
It was Loïc who first noticed it, furrowing his brow in the direction of the city. A moment later, Vall’s gaze faltered in her attentiveness to Laostic’s instructions, flickering down and away into the darkened corners of the island fortress. It was only several confused moments later that Laostic halted and looked over his shoulder – as if that which set the hairs on the back of his neck to standing could be found looming behind him.
Back in the main hideout of Skylarks gang, only two people were left to guard the unpawnable spoils of a thousand speculative larcenies. Tentpole had gone to fetch Butcher and the newcomer, to try and see if they could find a consensus on how to deal with Mikka and his Idol.
Mistress slipped into crude sackcloth overalls and pulled on elbow-length leather gloves. For once, she did not look like a noble lady disguising herself as a well-to-do bourgeois merchant’s daughter, but instead, like a noble lady’s absurd imagination of what a stablehand might dress like. She had been left rather put out by the day’s affairs, and thought to work off the tension by finally throwing out the most offensively useless of the clutter. It would doubtless be filled in again before the week was done, but she might as well get her hand in, now that she was on her own.
The boy tied to his worktable by an iron chain and chest harness he could easily have picked open with any of the pieces of scrap metal which surrounded him would not even have registered surprise if he knew Mistress had once again discarded his existence as a human in her thoughts. She had tied him up in his corner of the room to keep him from tampering any more with the Idol while she worked – and he was not of a mind to tempt any more trouble for today.
And so, as one of them returned to the assembly he had so reluctantly been ripped from earlier that day, and the other disappeared into a cloud of dust in another corner – tossing rusting tools and small items of furniture into a makeshift refuse pile with loud thuds, clangs, and unlikely shatterings – neither of them noticed as the artefact in the centre of the room began to pulse with a strange glow of deep blue with hints of yellow. After trembling uncertainly on the tabletop, as if questing for the source of a distant, half-heard whisper, it lifted itself a few inches into the air.
Inside a great rock which, lapped by breaking waves, jutted out behind the tidal island housing the fortress of the city’s governor, a young man leaned writhing against the wall which held the velvet-lined manacles which bound him by either wrist. As he writhed, he mumbled, giving faint voice to the inner convulsions which his motions could not fully express.
“I’m sorry… I’m sorry… I’m so sorry. If I could only just stop all this. But to stop all this, I’d have to figure out — no. No, stop. Don’t go there. I’m just… I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
His thrashing slowed, and his eyes cleared of the misty haze that gathers on the inside of windows of a warmed room in winter.
“That’s what you get, though, Sonj. What else could you expect from looking for answers outside? For trying to rely on things that can change. The problem comes from within – and that’s where you’ll have to go to fix it.”
And with that, he was lost again in that invisible and private space which can become the world’s most inescapable prison. Lost, until he reached over to the wall with outstretched fingers, and the manacles came unlocked. Released from his bonds, he walked over to the desk with purposeful air. Taking out a sheet of paper and an inkpot into which he dipped his quill, he began to write in flowing script the following words.
A proposal.
Part of the problem – forgive me for the violent term – is the very construction of the inside/outside dichotomy. That is to say: my way of building a picture of what is “me, in here” and “the world, out there” is working less like a fence to keep order and protect each other from violence, and more like the dungeon walls of a torture cell. It is like a collar drawn too tightly over the neck, or gateless city walls which cut off the suburbs and the fields which feed its populace and maintain their sanity through regular exposure to the beauty of green things. I only isolate myself, generate distress, and shut out key resources unnecessarily.
To illustrate the alternative, let us take the analogy of walking. One searches for a stable location to set one’s foot not in order to settle there and build a homestead, but to propel oneself forward. And this point (these points, plural) are always shifting, with each and every step. But not only is each footfall unique – they also alternate predictably between left and right, in a steady rocking which gives the motion its rhythm.
And what I am suggesting here is that the inside/outside construct is a parallel to the alternation of the left and right foot.When the ‘problem’ is ‘inside’ the footing is found outside. And then, in turn, vice versa.
For example – the difficulty and ambiguity being outside (where to find one’s breakfast), one makes a stable point of one’s desires, intentions, appetites, tastes, and available skills (“I want to have a buttered roll for breakfast”), and thus moves through an open world in search of the most convenient baker, oven, pantry, victual stock, etc.
“I wish to eat breakfast” is, for the purposes of this life step, the solid footing.
The streets and ingredients and coin – that is to say, the world – flow accordingly, as they can fit in with the demands of this directive.
And I submit that there must be a corresponding logic – and with this I come to the crux of the desired insight – in the opposite case.
Not knowing what I am – or, more crucially of course, what I am to do – that is to say, what I want, wish for, intend, fancy, or crave, even – then the so-called “external world” should take on the steadying, grounding role. It is then the right foot’s turn to be the leg to stand on. It should give cues, prompts, inspirations to resolve the inner flux.
For example. Suppose one is unsure how to spend one’s afternoon. One cannot figure out if one is hungry, lonely, bored. In this case, the thing to do is wander around the city quite aimlessly, on the lookout for ideas. Coming across a street with foodstalls, a busking juggler, and an apothecary’s shop, one discovers that one is hungry, desirous of entertainment, or of treating one’s boils – and so decides to “be” a pie purchaser, audience member, or patient. In this way, the “world” provides the anchoring for “self”.
Naturally, one may alternate between these fairly rapidly – as in a dancer’s (or a pugilist’s) shuffle-step: The bakery is closed today (outside), so I’ll recalibrate my appetite (inside) and settle for porridge oats instead, which I find at the pantry of the castle’s guardhouse (outside).
Thus, one looks to the world with no sense of idolatry or fixation – indeed, quite the opposite. It is the manifestation of a deep understanding of the nature of things as ever-flowing alternation – the reflection in an unrippled pool of the Sun’s graceful, bowing invitation for the Moon to take its place.
Which brings us back from generalised theorising into the particular circumstances of the here-now I-world. What such cue would be the appropriate one to render myself receptive–
At this point, the young man ceased writing and, after a few moments drumming his fingers on the desk and tapping the heel of one foot on the toes of another, he rose and stood quite still by the horizontal window. The late afternoon was giving way to a spectacular sunset – the great star going down in a cleft between clouds, setting the whole roof of patchwork wisps above it alight in shades of crimson and a bottomless pink, while dark, towering stormclouds menaced from the east.
Soñj stood in clean awe at this for some minutes, before rushing back to the desk in an exhilarated rush to note down:
This. THIS. This surely is the cue in question. Such Beauty is the bell that tolls clear the message:
Thou art that which lies beyond both colour and delight, giving substance to them both but forever inviolate behind th-
The flow of verbal inspiration came to a halt and, after a moment’s hesitation, he judged the crowning insight to be captured well enough for now, and returned with sated, even consummated stride towards the window and out onto the shared splendour of–…
His heart thudded much louder and deeper for one beat, and it seemed to take a very, very long moment for his feet to settle gently down from where they had been suspended, an inch and a half above the floor. The boy put a hand to the stone wall to steady himself.
Had he erred somehow? Allowed himself to become too excited with the tonic – or intoxicant – of his own self-declared liberating insight? He looked back towards the desk, seeking reassurance that it had not been some fleeting self-deception – that he had noted down something of worth and truth… then shook his head. He wouldn’t find it that way – looking back. He put both hands on the wall and let his weight rest back on his heels.
“The physical world is, for the purpose of this instance, solid. Possessed of coolness, hardness…”
There was an all-resounding boom.
Loïc heaved the stone pedestal to one side, toppling the harpoon onto the floor. Vall flew first into the dark stairway, her breath fluting in and out, hand running along the rough stones of the wall to help her stay on even keel through the waves of panic. Loïc flashed in after her. Laostic brought up the rear and bellowed out the boy’s name, sending echoes reverberating down the narrow passage.
“Soñj… Soñj! SOÑJUS!!”
The three of them rushed into the boy’s chamber to find him floating in the air, halfway between the ceiling and the floor. His legs were bent backwards slightly, as if he were kneeling in prayer, while circles of blue light pulsated around his neck and slid down the arms which hung limply at his side.
“Soñj! Boy, what happened? S-”
The seemingly sourceless booming – which appeared to have faded into an unseen distance – grew louder again, until the end of one blended into the beginning of the next, and the keening whistle nestled in their cavernous palpitations could be heard constantly.
Loïc gestured them both back and raised his left hand before him. His index and middle fingers pointing upwards like a sword, while the others curled into the shape of a buckler. He swayed unsteadily from side to side, as if buffeted by winds, and when he wrenched his eyes ajar and returned to an open palm, all he could do with it was gesture his two companions back again.
Meanwhile, Soñj’s neck craned slowly backwards until he faced the ceiling. The blue circles of light shimmered around his fingertips, trembling. They flinched back up his arms, constricting around his throat before shooting upwards, past the mouth he opened in a silent roar.
Vall frowned deeply. The booms were growing closer, more frequent, and taking on the timbre of musical notes.
Outside, thick drops of rain started to fall.
“You. Hey. You! Hey! Oneface!”
“What?”
“Would you stop that creepy noise already?”
“What was that?! I can’t hear you!”
“Would you SHUT that uncanny racket up, for once and for–”
“Hmm? Oh, that. But I’m not–”
Oneface looked up from the diving suit he was finally stretching out to Tentpole’s dimensions. On the other side of the room, a cloud of dust settled to reveal a shambling sandperson – that is, to reveal Mistress in her makeshift sackcloth armour, bandana tied over her mouth and a ribbon of gauze wrapped over her eyes.
Between them, the artefact was floating upwards, at the centre of almost a hundred rings of varying thickness, passing from a white gold to a deep mustard – and all followed by an after-trace of hypnotic black.
“Wha… wha……. One-face! What have you done?!!”
“Nothing! I haven’t touched it! You’re the one who tied me here!”
Mistress’ response was drowned out by a wave of concussive force which sent them both flying into the walls.
Having expanded its rings until the limits of the room, the artefact retracted them back into itself, then sent them out in a beam through the opening in the ceiling, into the skies above.
Butcher and Winky were walking through the narrow alleyways around the thoroughfare which led into the city from the docks when the first drops began to fall.
Winky had lingered as Butcher led her through the queue at the South Gate, reluctant to lose sight of the stunning sunset taking place over the Northern Sea. She had noted that the storm clouds to the east were many miles off. And yet now, mere minutes later, it was already raining. She would have shrugged this off were it not for the unbidden but unignorable feeling rising within her, as if a reservoir had begun to boil and flow over its walls.
Butcher was just starting to mutter dark curses under her breath, pull her habit down over her eyes and shout to her companion to run before they got wet when she heard a familiar voice shout out:
“Winky!”
She looked up to see Tentpole running towards them, but looking straight past her. Turning around, she just caught a glimpse of white as Winky ran between two buildings and disappeared from view.
“Why’she… whjsshh… huff, huff… running away… from me?”
“Hell if I know! Why’re you running? Where are the hounds?”
“Mikka has… Mikka… ah, forget it. Let’s catch up… to Winky before she… lost…”
He ran past Butcher without even finishing his sentence. For her part, the pink-haired girl shot a longing glance in the direction from which he came, then followed along behind him with a sigh.
Clutching the front of her dress in both hands, Winky ran at a steady pace towards the clearest part of the darkening skies, ducking between broad-shouldered, bearded workmen, handcarts, and dirty children in the narrow alleyways. Above her, many of the lines of rope threading between the close-standing buildings were being untied on one end and shaken lightly to allow the clothes strung on them to slide into windows which were quickly shut behind them.
Before long, she reached the sea-facing outer wall of the city. Looking left and right, she couldn’t see any stairs leading up it… but one tall building was built so close that she could clamber up between them.
“Win… ky… what are you doing?!”
Panting, Tentpole rounded the corner just in time to see her scramble to the top of the ramparts. She stood up and brushed some of the grime off the front of her dress. As she looked out over the sea, she froze, jaw agape, deaf to Tentpole’s increasingly confused cries and Butcher’s increasingly deadpan follow-ups.
In the prison cell by the sea, Soñj’s floating body slackened, all tension sloughing off it until his toes pointed straight at the floor and his mouth hung limply open. The light around him turned into a delicately shimmering cyan, from which a ghostly blue image of him began to detach itself from his body and pass outwards through the wall.
Laostic rushed forward to catch his falling son. Loïc collapsed onto one knee. Vall surprised herself by standing still and looking around the room for any clue at what might have caused this. Her gaze landed on the piece of paper on the desk, and its delicately flowing script.
Tentpole grunted and Butcher grumbled as they clambered up the seawall. Tentpole put a hand on Winky’s shoulder, before he too was struck silent by the sight before him.
“…well. I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen it do that before,” Butcher mused.
The stormclouds Winky had seen towering on the north-eastern horizon were still lumbering over in the distance. And yet, their rains already reached Tremallan – for hundreds of thick tendrils of vapour were being pulled over, across the sea, and undulating in bewitching patterns.
Stretched out over so many miles, each cord of stormcloud caught different colours from the setting sun along its length, phasing from greyish black to violet, crimson, and magenta. As they reached Tremallan, they merged into a great cylinder towering over the city as far up as the eye could see.
As the three of them watched, the monolith of cloud began to be lit up from within by lines of gold. Butcher let out a little yelp and ducked, thinking them flashes of lightning – but Tentpole noted they lasted too long to be that. With only a gasp-like rumble for warning – which Butcher again ducked, thinking it thunder – an incandescent beam shot straight up from somewhere north of the city, piercing the stacked cloud through the centre and sending dozens of emerald rays cascading out from it like ribbons on a festival pole.
“Over there…”
Tentpole tore his gaze from the inexplicable spectacle above to look where Winky was pointing. Squinting, he could just about make out a dim blue dot threading up from the Governor’s island, through the beam, towards the heavenly monolith.
David Leon 