“It has the property of preserving corpses. The bodies are weighed by forcing lead shot down their throats, then sunk here with their positions mapped so they can be fished up again later if anyone wants to look at them.”
I would readily have sworn that there was no one within a league of where we stood. Or at least (if the segments of the glass building really confined the spaces they enclosed as they were supposed to do) within the borders of the Garden of Endless Sleep. But Agia had no sooner said what she did than the head and shoulders of an old man appeared over the top of some reeds a dozen paces off.
“'Tis not true,” he called. “I know they say so, but 'tisn't right.”
Agia, who had allowed the torn bodice of her gown to hang as it would, quickly drew it up again. “I didn't know I was talking to anyone but my escort here.” The old man ignored the rebuke. No doubt his thoughts were already too involved with the remark he had overheard for him to pay much heed.
“I've the figure here — would you like to see it? You, young sieur — you've an education, anyone can tell that. Will you look?” He appeared to be carrying a staff. I watched its head rise and fall several times before I understood that he was poling toward us.
“More trouble,” Agia said. “We'd better go.” I asked if it might not be possible for the old man to ferry us across the lake, thus saving us the long walk around.
He shook his head. “Too heavy for my little boat. There's but room for Cas and me here. You great folk would capsize us.”
The prow came into sight, and I saw that what he said was true: the skiff was so small it seemed almost too much to ask of it that it keep the old man himself afloat, though he was bowed and shrunken by age (he appeared older even than Master Palaemon) until he could hardly have weighed more than a boy of ten. There was no one in it with him.
“Your pardon, sieur,” he said. “But I can't come no nearer. Wet she may be, but she gets too dry for me, or you couldn't walk upon it. Can you step here by the edge so's I can show you my figure?”
I was curious to see what it was he wanted of us, so I did as he asked, Agia following me reluctantly.
“Here now.” Reaching into his tunic he pulled out a small scroll. “Here is the position. Have a look, young sieur.”
The scroll was headed with some name and a long description of where this person had lived, whose wife she was, and what her husband had done for a living; all of which I only pretended to glance at, I am afraid. Below the description were a crude map and two numbers.
“Now you see, sieur, it ought to be easy enough. First number there, that's paces over from the Fulstrum. Second number's paces up. Now would you believe that for all these years I've been trying to find her, and never found her yet?” Looking at Agia, he drew himself up until he stood almost normally.
“I'd believe it,” Agia said. “And if it will satisfy you, I'm sorry to hear it. But it has nothing to do with us.”
She turned to go, but the old man thrust out his pole to prevent my following her. “Don't you heed what they say. They put them where the figure shows, but they don't stay there. Some has been see'd in the river, even.” He looked vaguely toward the horizon. “Out there.”
I told him I doubted that was possible.
“All the water here, where'd you think it come from? There's a conduit underground that brings it, and if it didn't this whole place'd dry out. When they get to moving about, what's to prevent one from swimming through? What's to prevent twenty? Can't be any current to speak of. You and her — you come to get a avern, did you? You know why they planted 'em here to begin with?” I shook my head.
“For the manatees. They're in the river, and used to swim in through the conduit. It scared the kin to see their faces bobbing in the lake, so Father Inire had the gardeners plant the averns. I was here and saw it. Just a little man he is, with a wry neck and bow legs. If a manatee comes now, those flowers kill it in the night. One morning I come looking for Cas like I always do unless I've something else I have to take care of, and there was two curators on the shore with a harpoon. Dead manatee in the lake, they said. I went out with my hook and got it, and it wasn't no manatee, but a man. He'd spit up his lead, or they hadn't put enough in. Looked as good as you or her, and better than me.”
“Had he been dead long?”
“No way of telling, for the water here pickles them. You'll hear it said it turns their skin to leather, and so it does. But don't think of the sole of your boot when you hear it. More like a woman's glove.”
Agia was far ahead of us, and I began to walk after her. The old man followed us, poling his skiff parallel to the floating path of sedge.
“I told them I'd had better luck in one day for them than I've had in forty years for myself. Here's what I use.” He held up an iron grapple on a length of rope. “Not that I haven't caught aplenty, all kinds. But not Cas. I started where the figure showed, year after she died. She wasn't there, so I kept working my way out. After five years of that I was a ways far away — that's what I thought then — from what it said. I got to be afraid she might be there after all, so I begun over. First where it said, then working out. Ten years of that. I got to be afraid again, so what I do now is start in the morning where it says, and make my first cast there. After that I go to where I stopped the last time, and circle out some more. She's not where it says — I know that, I know everyone that's there now, and some of them I've pulled up a hundred times. But she's wandering, and I keep thinking maybe she'll come home.”
“She was your wife?”
The old man nodded, and to my surprise said nothing.
“Why do you want to recover her body?”
Still he said nothing. His pole made no sound as it slipped in and out of the water; the skiff left only the faintest of wakes behind it, tiny ripples that lapped the side of the sedge track like the tongues of kittens.
“Are you sure you would know her, after so long a time, if you found her?”
“Yes... yes.” He nodded, slowly at first, then vigorously. “You're thinking I may have hooked her already. Drug her up, looked her in the face, and throwed her back in. Ain't you? It ain't possible. Not know Cas? You wondered why I want her back. One reason is the memory I have of her — the one that's strongest — is of this brown water
