Molly Fyde and the Land of Light

29

Dani pulled the vehicle to a stop at the edge of the government district. Edison lumbered out of the back seat, and Anlyn followed. As she stepped to the sidewalk and approached the passenger door, the window slid open.

“Be careful in there,” Dani said, leaning over from his seat to catch her eye.

“I will be,” she said.

Dani glanced at Edison, then his lance. “Don’t use that unless you win the vote, and only outside. The spectacle will be just as important for our cause as the politics; otherwise, the vote won’t stick.”

Edison nodded.

“We need to go,” Anlyn told them both. She pulled Edison toward the crowded walkway as Dani waved, then merged back into the traffic. The couple marched swiftly as the crowd parted to either side, the confused jumble of foot traffic becoming ordered and sedate ahead of them.

The crowd morphed into two walls of Drenards, all of whom gawked at the couple as they strode through the heart of the government district. Part of the treatment could be attributed to the royal regalia Anlyn wore, signifying herself as the next in line to the throne.

Her large companion explained the rest.

“Use English when you’re conferring with me,” she told Edison. “Few of the Circle Members are fluent.”

“Understood,” Edison replied. “My Drenard vocabulary lacks finesse.”

Anlyn reached up and put her hand in his. “Nonsense. I’ve never seen anyone pick up a language so fast. I just hope you don’t overlearn it the way you have English.”

“My understanding of that last is non-optimal.”

Anlyn squeezed one of his large fingers. “Exactly. Now, remember the rules. Most votes are controlled by kicking members out on technicalities. Any slip-up and our voices won’t be heard.”

“My familiarity with such gatherings contains both accuracy and precision. Glemot Councils operated in parallel fashion.”

“Okay, here we go…”

They passed under the Clockwise Gate and into the Apex, the arbitrarily chosen “top” of the Drenard home planet. With all the important, habitable land arranged in a ring, locations were given by distance from the top, which is where the Circle met. One direction away from the Apex translated best as “clockwise” into English, but “spinward” would also work. The other direction was “counterclockwise.”

Not only did land value plummet according to distance from the Apex, even elements of Drenard psychology could be accurately measured in the manner residents of the upper ring looked— metaphorically, of course— down on those that lived and worked throughout the lower half of the ring. Clockwise residents even argued with counterclockwise folk, as if the direction around the ring were somehow any less arbitrary than the chosen top and bottom of the planet.

Once one place had been chosen as special, of course, subsequent improvements had surely made it so. While most of the great ringed city around Drenard stayed in perpetual twilight, a cone of reflected and filtered sunlight bathed the massive circle that made up the Apex.

It was one of the few places on Drenard where flora grew in the open, unshielded by glass. Acres of gardens spread here in a complex of labyrinths, all protected by a high exterior wall to shield out the persistent wind, but otherwise uncovered. The wall itself was webbed in colorful ivy that weaved around and up the barrier, popping with blooms that shivered up high where vortexes of wind dipped into the gardens.

Anlyn strolled through the gate, taking in the familiar sights, breathing the old smells. It took her a few nostalgia-filled moments to realize Edison was no longer beside her.

She turned and saw him back by the gate, his head turning from side to side as he absorbed the marvel of the Apex gardens, the small trees, the flowers, the patches of green grass. He had both arms raised, the light of the twin stars shimmering on his fur. Anlyn’s chest heaved with pride for her home, but then she caught the movement along Edison’s arms, the waving fur she recognized at once for sadness.

“Burn me,” she cursed, hurrying back to him. “I should’ve warned you.”

He looked at her, his eyes bright with moisture. “I’m within tolerances,” he said. “Mere recollections of home.”

She took his hand again. “I’m sorry, love, just concentrate on the path.”

“Negative. Observing remains important.”

She nodded and guided him along. Together, they strolled over extravagant pathways of real wood, none of the less expensive marble used elsewhere. Anlyn tried to distract him by pointing to the Pinnacle, the building resting in the center of the large park.

“That’s where the Circle meets,” she said.

“Stupendously unassuming,” Edison growled.

“To you, maybe. But this is one of the shortest buildings on Drenard, a rare luxury.”

Edison swept a paw across the view, the top edge of the building just visible as it stretched across a good portion of the gardens. “Massive, nonetheless,” he pointed out.

“It’s wide, yeah. Another decadent waste. We could feed or house a lot of people here… don’t get me started. Oh, and when we get to the top of the steps, let me do the talking. There’ll be a lot of guards on the balcony and none of this crowd. Go ahead and hold your lance, just keep the tip like I showed you.”

Edison unclipped the strap that held his modified lance to his back and moved it into his hand. He kept the weapon vertical, tip-down, and tucked next to his hip.

The modifications he’d made had been a romantic gesture, a gift for their looming wedding ceremony, but when Dani saw a demonstration, he insisted they bring it along. If everything went their way, they would use it to seal their victory, making the celebration legendary and less likely to be overturned.

As they wound their way toward the center of the Apex, Anlyn noticed most of the crowd was flowing in the same direction. Word of the meeting had already spread, as had the rumors of multiple deaths in the royal line. The entire planet buzzed with uncommon energy, a wild force that could be shunted toward war or peace, and it was up to Anlyn and Edison to make sure it went toward the latter.

The couple ignored the attention they got from the crowd and just followed the walkway as it snaked through the gardens. They went past small ponds full of floating flowers, through a fake canyon where manufactured Wadi holes leaked miniature waterfalls, then through the dragonmoth plantings, where various colorful plants swarmed with the bright, silvery insects.

Eventually, the path wound back toward the Pinnacle where a wide set of wooden steps awaited beyond the mingling and surging crowds. A sizable group of Drenard youth stood clustered near the bottom of the steps, listening to an adult speak. When the guide spotted Anlyn and her tunics, he directed the group’s attention their way and launched into an excited spiel on royal finery.

“Ignore them,” Anlyn told Edison. She pulled him through the crowd and up the steps, taking the first few too quickly before remembering her station—and trying to forget her youth. She bent forward slightly, grabbed her outer tunics with both hands, and concentrated on walking with perfect grace.

The tall steps leading up to the balcony made it difficult; they were designed by male workers for male strides. Beside her, Edison’s problem continued to be walking slow enough to not get too far ahead. She marveled again at the irony: when she fled Drenard, she dreamed of falling for a more sensibly sized alien. A human, even, though that idea likely came from her desire to perturb her uncles.

No matter: whether by dumb luck or DNA, she’d ended up engaged to a man almost as big as her last fiancee.

The ruminations ended as she reached the top of the flight of worn steps and saw an entire battalion of the royal guard awaiting them.

The guards stood, neatly arranged in the sunlight, their number quadrupled exclusively for her and her partner. The commander stepped forward in his deep blue tunic; Anlyn didn’t recognize him, but she could read everything in his layers and the way his heavily decorated lance nearly drug on the ground. His posture