“And that was the end of Benjamin Finesilver, Gretamara. His departure from life went unnoticed save by several faithful and tongueless servants of Stentor d’Lorn who were ordered to see him on his way. The following day, while Stentor was locked in his chambers, raging with grief, Bogge, the wanderer he had hired to take the doctor to Swylet, came to the palace and was turned away by the gateman. ‘He doesn’t need you to take the doctor. It’s too late for the doctor. His daughter’s body has already been placed in the tomb of her family.’
“Bogge was uncertain what propriety demanded of him in such a case. ‘Should I speak with the Lord? I have already spent some of the money he paid me…’
“‘If I were you, I’d stay away for a time,’ said the gateman. ‘Likely the Lord doesn’t want to be reminded of it. As for the money, it was probably little enough. I’ll tell him you came and offered.’
“And so the gateman did, sometime later, after Bogge had departed for some other place. Only then did Stentor d’Lorn realize the consequences of his haste in disposing of his daughter’s husband. Benjamin would have known the way to Swylet. Bogge had claimed to know the way, but the gateman knew neither where Bogge had gone nor when he would return. None of the wanderers currently in Bray knew of Swylet or Bogge.
“Since that time, Stentor has sent his agents here and there in fruitless searches for a mountain place known as Swylet. The name does not appear on any map known to the archivists; it is not mentioned in any account cited by explorers-cum-amateur-geographers.”
“How do you know this?” I asked.
“I was there,” said the Gardener. “I needed to know, for Sophia’s sake, and I could not know truly unless I was there.”
“You could not know what he was thinking?” I asked.
The Gardener shook her head. “Except as his actions betrayed his thought, no. Almost all humans are at least partly my people, but not he. He is as dark to me as a K’Famir or a Frossian. I do not know what he thinks or feels, but I know he has not given up the search. He has willed everything to his granddaughter, setting aside only a sizable reward for whatever person shall return her to Bray.”
I shivered at the fate of Sophia’s father and the darkness that dwelt within her grandfather, and I thought it was as well that only the Gardener and I knew where the heiress of Bray might be found.
I Am Naumi/on Thairy
When I was taken for life-service, the Escort helped me aboard a small flier and directed me to take the seat nearest the single window.
“Flown before, boy?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, first time is always memorable. From that seat you’ll get a good long look at Thairy from the route we’re going.”
“Where are we going?” I wondered, as the words left my lips, if I was even allowed to ask questions.
“Academy,” the Escort replied. “You’re being taken directly to the academy at Point Zibit. That’s across Gentheren country from here. You ever met a Gentheren?”
“No, sir.”
The man laughed. “Well, of course not, and neither have I, nor are we likely to. You just settle yourself back there. If you start to feel sick to your stomach, tell me right away.”
“Yes, sir.”
The flier went gently upward, the Escort glancing back occasionally to see whether I was going to be all right or not. Not that he’d hold it against me if I wasn’t, but I supposed washing out the flier wasn’t one of his favorite ways to end the working day.
I amazed myself by feeling exhilarated. Excited, in a nice way, and eager to look down on Bright, so tiny, like the little toy village I remembered having…no, seeing somewhere. No, it was one I’d imagined, when I was a child. Strange. I didn’t really remember having it, just…knowing about it. The toy village moved away from beneath us as we followed the road, the one I had never followed farther than the quick route to the swimming hole. It wound over little hills, past tiny farms with toy barns, and as we climbed higher, whitish dots appeared in the fields. Cows, maybe, though they seemed too large. After a while the road began to twist back and forth like a serpent, we went steeply upward, and I was looking down on mountains. Every now and then a house roof winked sun in my eye or a stretch of narrow river glinted silver amid the endless carpet of trees.
We went higher yet, crossing a great cracked slab of red cliffs onto a tableland even more thickly forested than below. There the trees were interrupted by wide streams, sizable lakes and towns where piers thrust out into the water. Suddenly there was only water. What I’d seen earlier hadn’t been lakes at all. They’d been…inlets, that’s all, inlets. This was the lake. Or maybe it was a sea. Only seas weren’t high up, like this. Seas were down in bottomlands.
“The Upland Sea,” said the Escort. “Impressive, isn’t it. This mesa is huge, the size of a continent, and it’s higher at the edges than in the middle. They say it’s what’s left of a caldera, the edges are the rim-rock, the middle had a lot of ashes in it. Water filled it up, then ate waterfalls down the edges, washed out some of the ash after every rain, every snow, gradually wore it down to where it is now. Gentheren country. There’s the city.”
He turned the flier on its side, so I could look down. A city made of glass and trees, a wide grove of trees, monumentally tall and joined together with spider silk bridges and canopies.
“It’s beautiful,” I said. “Can we go closer?”
The Escort laughed. “If you want to be shot out of the sky, maybe. We’re as low as we’re allowed to be.”
“They don’t let you
