House of Reeds

primary was now visible in the triangular opening between the eaves. Noon already? A wasted morning, then, getting lost… Now how do I…

'Your pardon!' Gretchen caught sight of the Jehanan's tail flicking around a corner and ran to catch up with the gardener. The native paused. 'I won't keep you for more than a moment, honorable one. But…do you know how I could reach the intersection of panca-sapta and trieka?'

'Hooo…' Malakar eyed her up and down again, hissing softly. 'Tall teeth indeed. You do not seem so rich or so powerful to have such a khus.' A clawed hand scratched dirty scales. 'Are you lost?' Gretchen nodded. 'Entirely.'

The Jehanan's nostrils twitched. She looked down the passageway, then back at the human, and then down the passage again. Laboriously, Malakar shifted herself around, the butt of the staff clanking on the ground. 'Not polite to let guests wander and die in confusing city. I will show you the way.'

Gretchen was short of breath and wheezing after fifteen minutes of following the old Jehanan up out of the maze of the city. Not only was Takshila located at considerable altitude in comparison to the lowlands around Parus but the gardener was quite spry. Despite being half blinded by sweat, Anderssen took care to note they had left the street level and climbed a flight of stairs – through a dark, musty shop selling carpets and between two buildings – to reach a flat rooftop.

'This is how the locals travel?' Gretchen looked around in appreciation.

Malakar nodded, indicating a landscape of domes, flat roofs, racks of drying, freshly dyed cloth and trellises covered with brightly colored flowers. 'Streets below for commerce, for wagons, for hauling. This path is for sensible people.'

'Not usually including humans, I'd imagine.' The archaeologist adjusted her hat. Out of the humid tangle of streets, the air was cooler and the sun hotter. She surveyed the horizon and was immediately disgusted to see the base of the monastery hill less than a kilometer away to the north. I was probably about to step out at its foot… So much for Green Hummingbird's vaunted finding-the-path. The cluster of skyscrapers soared against a cloud-flecked sky to her left. Doubtless, Magdalena can count my nose hairs now.

'You see? There is your destination.' The elderly Jehanan pointed towards the apartment building with a long, tapering snout. 'By ancient law, stairs which ascend to rooftops are public thoroughfares. Then you must pass between buildings. You see?'

Gretchen saw. While the rooftops of the buildings were filled with tub gardens, cages holding plump gray birds and covered patios, the intervening walls were topped by walkways of brick or wood. Sometimes lined by railings, sometimes not.

Without waiting, Malakar set off towards the cluster of finlike apartment buildings. Anderssen hurried after, trying not to gawk at the private patios on either side. There were a very large number of Jehanan out sunning themselves, either on blankets or on wooden frames, and none of them paid her any mind as she walked past. She was both relieved and wary. The hostile air prevalent in the streets around the train station was absent, but there was still a tense feeling in the air. As on the stairs, the gardener set a swift pace.

After another twenty minutes of clambering up and down flights of stairs and rattling along splintery walkways, the rooftops ended at one of the wide boulevards. Malakar paused, peering left and right. 'This panjir-road leads to the khus you seek,' Malakar said, rumbling voice slightly raised.

They descended to the level of the boulevard, and Gretchen became distracted as they turned right up the street. The curve of the roadway – seen intermittently through the throng of swift-moving Jehanan – kept drawing her eye. There was something odd about the trees shading the sidewalk. She stopped, staring at a planter. The tree itself seemed very old – the roots had cracked the pavement all around, lifting up concrete in tilted slabs – and the branches reached out almost level across the road, casting deep shade over a constant stream of carts drawn by brawny Jehanan runners.

Drifts of leaves had collected in the gutter along the edge of the road, but – and this was the oddity which had drawn Gretchen's eye – the surface of the road itself had not split or broken open like the concrete. Keeping an eye out for onrushing wagons, she brushed back the leaves. Beneath her fingers, a smooth black surface gleamed up.

'All these larger roads, they're Haraphan?' She looked up at the gardener, who was running both claw-hands across the ridged trunk of the tree. 'They liked curved paths and surfaces?'

'Hoooo… yes. They say the straight is dangerous.' Malakar tapped her staff against the disintegrating concrete. 'Sturdily made, their things are. Last a long time, longer than anything made by our feeble claws.'

Gretchen studied the native's face and the gardener seemed weathered and weary, more like the tree than the languid, soft-shelled youths loitering in the shop doorways, narrow heads wreathed in pipe smoke. 'Do you know stories about the Haraphan civilization? Do records survive from that time? In stone or metal or…'

Malakar said nothing, regarding the human stonily. Her leathery lips twitched back, exposing rows of blackened teeth. Gretchen flinched and bowed automatically – still on her knees beside the invincible roadway – and pressed her forehead into the pavement. 'Your pardon. Thank you for showing me the way home.'

'Huuuu…' The gardener made a thoughtful hooting sound, then rapped her staff on the ground again. 'As I say, they last, perhaps longer than we.'

Then, before Gretchen could respond, the old Jehanan strode away without another word, the dark gray-green scales on her back dappled with sunlight falling through the branches of the ancient trees.

Anderssen watched the gardener go, then realized she was alone on a public thoroughfare, surrounded by thousands of busy Jehanans. Some of them were now staring at her – suspiciously, she thought – and keeping a wide berth as they passed. Whatever polite grace the gardener had lent evaporated in her absence.

Layers upon layers, she thought, turning towards the apartment building. Did she mean records of the Haraphan civilization still exist, perhaps when the equivalent Jehanan history has been lost? Or…does she mean the Haraphans themselves still live upon Jagan?

Anderssen kept her head low as she headed home, hoping to avoid notice. In comparison to the placid rooftop gardens and industrious, half-seen workshops, the public street was very loud and dirty and filled with agitated, angry natives. The barking sound of runner-cart horns drowned out everything else, even the hissing shouts and complaints of the drivers.

The Palace of The Kujen

Gandaris, 'The Indomitable, Ever-Victorious Bastion of the North'

A spear struck the window of the Imperial aerocar, the lohaja-wood point scoring the armored glass before falling out of sight. Prince Tezozуmoc, sandwiched in between Colmuir and Corporal Clark, flinched at the sharp sound. The young man's eyes were screwed tight and his white-knuckled hands clutched his knees. The lean-faced Skawtsman peered out the window, taking in the surging mob filling the square below and eased the safety on his Nambu back with a soft click.

'Now there is a vigorous reception, mi'lord. They do seem to love us here.'

The city residence of kujen Nahwar, prince of Gandaris, was a gaudy confection of russet domes and towers and fluted minarets gleaming with rust-colored marble. Colmuir could see a series of interlocking courtyards and gardens, all flush with green trees and limpid pools. Some of the inner buildings seemed to be entirely composed of flowering trellises. The stout, ten-meter-high battlement surrounding the palace would have seemed out of place, were it not for the thousands of angry Jehanan citizens swarming in the public square facing the residence. A squat gatehouse rose up out of a sea of gray-green faces, surmounted by an overhanging parapet. A cluster of Jehanan nobles was standing on the roof, well back from the edge, and Colmuir guessed the fat one in the middle with all the bronze and copper chasing on his body-harness was either the prince himself, or his vizier.

Below, in the center of the square, the mob was tearing a wooden landing platform apart with their bare hands while a whole array of priests hammered enormous drums, bellowed encouragement to the crowd and waved forests of painted banners over their scaly heads. Any sign of princely authority had fled. Smoke billowed from an impromptu bonfire fed by wagons, meters of pro-Imperial posters and anything flammable to hand. The crowd