Waterborn

just wondered if you could tell me something about it. Anything.'

'You've mentioned this before,' Yen said, 'and I didn't tell you before, but it puzzles me. I've seen nobles in the city many, many times. Why have you never been out?'

'I'm not old enough,' she confessed, hoping the weight of what that meant to her was not apparent in her voice, on her features.

'Ah. But soon?'

'Yes. I suppose that's why I ask.'

'Well, I don't know where to start. It all seems so plain to me, so common. Most people spend their whole lives wondering what the inside of the palace is like, you know. We don't think much about fishmongers and scorps, unless we have to.'

'Scorps?'

'Scorpions. Thieves, cutthroats. Some parts of the city are rather dangerous, you know.'

'The merchants' quarter, where you grew up?'

'No, not really. We have burglars, now and again, people who break into our houses to steal things, but they aren't really dangerous. They avoid the kind of trouble killing a rich man might bring down on them. They are very stealthy, crafty—but not dangerous. No, the scorps haunt the docks, the warehouse district, Southtown…'

'Would you come with me?' she asked him abruptly.

'What?'

'Just for a few moments, would you come with me?'

'Ah, I suppose. To where?'

'A place I know, where we can see the city, where you can point to things when you talk about them.'

'Will that be all right? Without an escort?'

She had briefly forgotten about that. Tsem was with Ghan.

'Just for a short time. And no one will see us, I promise.'

'If you promise,' he said solemnly, 'then I'm bound to believe you.'

 

 

'That is my father's house,' Yen said, pointing. 'The one with the red awning, you see?'

Hezhi followed the line of Yen's finger, out and away from the rooftop garden. 'Yes. Why, that's one of the largest houses there!'

'My father does well enough. Still, the least part of the palace makes it seem like a hovel.'

She frowned. 'But what of those houses?' she asked, indicating the thick, tiny huts of Southtown.

'Well, of course, those are real hovels,' Yen told her. 'One-room shacks with leaky roofs.'

'What are the people there like?'

Yen shrugged. 'I only know what I see—people from the rest of the city rarely venture into Southtown, you know. But the people there are scorps, beggars, cutpurses, prostitutes. The sort without the ambition to better themselves.'

'Do they have a choice about that?' she asked. 'Can they better themselves?'

Yen nodded easily. 'I think so. We all have choices, you, me, the people in Southtown. I could have followed my father, been a trader, but see, I chose another path.'

She wasn't so easily convinced. 'Surely it must be very difficult to live there. I mean, someone from down there couldn't get appointed to the Royal Engineers, the way you did, could they? I have trouble enough imagining life without slaves, servants, soldiers to protect me…'

Yen chuckled shortly. 'Why bother to imagine that? That would never be your lot.'

The irony of that almost stung, but she could not, of course, reveal her distress. 'I try to imagine many things,' she stated.

'As do I,' Yen replied, and for a moment his eyes flashed in a most peculiar way, a way that tickled her belly with warmth, brought blood to her face.

'More,' she demanded, tearing her eyes from the young man and looking back out over the rooftops and streets.

'Well… the docks, there. I used to sit on them when I had nothing else to do, watch the foreigners come in. Some of them were so strange, they couldn't even speak, but only gabble in their own barbaric languages.'

'Tell me about them,' she requested, resting her chin on the walled edge of the court, watching sunlight flash on the River like a thousand thousand golden eels. A great three-masted ship was just heaving out of the channel, toward, dock, its sails crumpling as it came, all but the lateen sail in back.

'There. What sort of ship is that?'

Yen nodded sagely. 'Look at that craft, Lady. It is built for sailing upon the ocean; see how most of the sails are rigged square, but the one aft is triangular? That lets them sail into the wind.'

'That seems impossible,' she remarked, watching the ship. It wasn't headed straight for the dock, but was instead beginning a peculiar little dance, switching back and forth, approaching the shore as one might a lover one were very shy of meeting.

'See? They're doing it now. Notice the pennant at the top of their mast? That will tell you how the wind is blowing.'

It was true. The pennant streamed away from Nhol and the docks, and yet the ship—the large ship—was somehow, if a bit tediously, moving into the breeze, without oars or a hauling rope.

'Very clever,' she breathed as she began to understand what was involved. They were using the wind against itself, stealing strength from it rather than confronting it headlong. 'Where is that ship from?'

'Well, I'm not quite certain. The south, for sure, but I can't make out the device on their pennant.'

Hezhi squinted. 'A serpent surrounding a quartered circle,' she said.

Yen looked at her with new respect. 'You have good eyesight, Lady. Well. That would be Dangun, one of the farthest of the Swamp Kingdoms, which actually borders on the coast. The ship, I think, is actually of Lhe manufacture.'

'Lhe? South along the gulf? I've seen that on maps.'

'Odd people, civilized in their own way, I suppose. They have skin as black as coal, as black as your hair and eyes. I like to watch them.'

He did not look at her as he said this, but she was left wondering if Yen meant he liked to watch the Lhe sailors or her hair and eyes.

'And up-River?'

'The Mang, of course, and across the desert to the east the Dehshe, who resemble the Mang. They cut timber, though, and mine tin, so I suppose they are a bit more civilized than the plainsmen. Their boatmen are usually a quiet lot. Again, unlike the Mang.'

'Have you ever met very pale men, with light hair and gray eyes?' she inquired.

'I've never laid eyes on such a man, though I have heard of them,' Yen said. 'They are said to live in the ice and snow at the very edge of the world, which colors them pale. The Mang speak of them as enemies, I think.'

'They live north, then?'

'North and west, I think, from wherever the River rises.'

'From the mountain?' Hezhi wondered. 'They live at She'leng?'

Yen raised his open palms. 'I know little of religious matters. It is a constant source of irritation to the priests.' He stepped nearer to her, hesitated, then reached out his ringers and took her chin in his palm. His eyes glowed, dark opals flecked with gold. Breath caught in her throat.

'We should go now,' she managed.

'Yes,' Yen told her. 'In just a moment.' He bent down, brushed his lips against hers. He did not press them wetly, as Wezh did, and they did not feel like wet liver. They felt sweet and warm, kind. And something else, something a little hungry…

She felt frozen as Yen drew away from her, unable to think.