It was growing late, she said; she wouldn’t have much time. She gave no name; samas never gave their names, often moved between isles and levels in the Tiers, their niches unknown, untraceable. Nobody paid them—they performed their work for food left over in the market, telling fortunes, leading prayers, treating minor injuries—the wardens took care of anything more serious. They were generally poorly dressed, often dirty and smelly, and this old female was no exception. She drew up the blankets around her narrow market stall—consultations with samas always took place in an awkward crouch, blankets raised to block the light and prying eyes—then she pushed aside her crusted bowl, squatted before Jebrassy, and thrust a thin bright stick into the dirt between them. The stick lit up her brown face and made her experienced black eyes gleam like broken glass. Her questions, as always, were blunt. “Did your sponsors kick you out because you fancy yourself a warrior, hanging with punks—or because you are straying?”
Jebrassy leaned forward and splayed his fingers on the ground. Samas could ask whatever they wanted—they were outsidenormal expectations. “They aren’t my true sponsors. Mer and Per were taken.”
“Taken, how?”
“A nightmare came.” This was a euphemism; Jebrassy was ashamed to use it. The sama did not show any sign of understanding—it was not her job to understand. Who could understand what happened during an intrusion? “How sad,” she said.
“The new ones sponsored me for a few hundred wakes. Then they got tired of me,” Jebrassy said.
“Why?”
“My rudeness. My curiosity.”
“Where do you sleep?”
“Sometimes, under a bridge. Other times, I hide out in the clusters on the flood channel walls.”
“The old Webla neighborhood? High up among the false books?”
“Nearby. Lots of empty niches. Sometimes I stay with a friend.” He tapped his knee. “I find shelter.”
“Has anyone ever spoken to your visitor, the other?”
Jebrassy lifted one finger, yes. “My friend tells me about him, sometimes.”
“But you don’t remember what was said.”
Two fingers circling, no.
“Do you know others who stray?”
His hairline flexed. “Maybe. A glow I’ve just met once. She…she wants to get together later. I don’t know why.” Jebrassy let that thought hang between them.
“You have no value?”
“I’m a warrior, a vagrant, no family.”
The sama hooted low amusement. “You don’t understand glows, do you?”
He glared.
“You say you’re unworthy. But not because you stray. Why, then?”
“I want to know things. Earlier, if I couldn’t join a march, I thought I would fight the Tall Ones and escape the Tiers.”
“Huh! Do you ever see Tall Ones?”
“No,” he said. “But I know they’re there.”
“You think you’re special, wanting to escape?”
“I don’t care whether I’m special or not.”
“Do you think this glow is dim?” the sama asked. She hadn’t moved since they squatted and started talking, but his own knees hurt.
“She doesn’t look dim.”
“Why do you want to meet with her?” She scratched her arm with a filthy fingertip.
“It would be interesting to find someone—anyone—who thinks like me.”
“You’re a warrior,” she observed. “You take pride in that.”
He looked away and drew back his lips. “War is play. Nothing here is real.”
“We get delivered by the umbers and we learn from our sponsors and teachers. We work, we love, we get taken away when the Bleak Warden comes. More young are made. Isn’t that real enough?”
“There’s more outside. I can feel it.”
She rocked gently on her ankles. “What else do you dream about? When you’re not straying.”
“The intrusion that took Mer and Per. I saw it. I was just out of crèche. After, the wardens made me sleep for a while, and I felt better, but I still dream about it. I thought it had come for me, but it took them…doesn’t make sense.”
“No? Why?”
“Intrusions come and go. The wardens put up shades and fog, clean up, and it’s over. Teachers just keep quiet. Nobody knows where the intrusions come from, what they’re doing here—even why they’re called ‘intrusions.’ Do they come from outside? From the Chaos—whatever that is? I want to know more.”
“What more is there to know?”
Jebrassy got up.
The sama rocked. “I don’t offer comfort. I fix letterbug nips, pede pinches, sometimes I fix bad dreams—but I can’t help these.”
“I don’t want comfort. I want answers.”
“Do you even know the right questions?”
Jebrassy said, too loudly, “Nobody ever taught me what to ask.”
Outside, the noise of the market dwindled. He heard a plaintive whine—a hungry meadow pede tethered in a stall, waiting for its tweenlight supper of stalks and jule. The sama poked out her wide lips and fell back from her squat, then stretched her legs and arms and let out a deep, sighing breath. He thought his visit was over, but she did not draw aside the blankets that curtained the booth.
“I’ll go,” he said.
“Quiet,” she advised. “My legs hurt. I’m wearing down, young breed. Not too long before the Bleak Warden comes. Stay a bit longer—for me.” She patted the ground. “I’m not done trying to riddle you. Why come to a poor old sama?”
Jebrassy sat and gazed uncomfortably at the thatched roof. “This glow, if I get interested in her, and she in me…it won’t be right. She has sponsors. I don’t.”
“Did youapproach her?”
“No.”
The sama pulled a sachet of red jule from her robe, wrapped it, and tied it with chafe cord, making a broothe for steeping in hot water. “Drink this. Relax. After you stray, take notes. Do you have a shake cloth?”
“I can find one.”
“Ah—you mean, steal one. Borrow one from your friend, if he has one, or from the glow, if you see her again. Write it all down and come back to show me.”
“Why?”
“Because we both need to know what questions to ask.” The sama stood, drew back the blankets, and let in the failing gray light from the ceil. The market was closed and almost empty. “Perhaps dreams are like flapping a shake cloth—you erase all the words you didn’t choose. Young warrior, we’re done, for now.”
She pushed him out of her stall.
A very young glow, fresh from the crèche—tiny red bump still prominent on her forehead, swad-boots wrapped around her tiny feet—stood before a shuttered stall, feeding a hungry pede. The pede curled its glossy black segments around her ankles, wriggling its many legs. The young glow squirmed and looked up at Jebrassy with an expression of tickled delight.
He touched his nose, sharing the moment.
To take a partner, inherit or be assigned a niche, live in the Tiers in silent contentment, ignoring things you couldn’t understand…sponsor a young one…
Why want more?
He had seen how much the intrusion concerned the wardens. None of this was going to last long, he could feel it in his bones.
On his way to the Diurns, Jebrassy stopped, peered at the ground, then knelt to examine the quality of the gravel that lined the path. Until now he had never given much thought to the substances that made up his world. He compared the gravel to the material used in most of the bridges, asking himself how this stony stuff differed from his own flesh, from the crops in the fields—and from the flexible stuff of the wardens, which he had had a number of opportunities to feel as he was being hauled away from one or another altercation.
Gravel, crops, flesh—not the same as the exposed isles beneath the Tiers: silver-gray, neither warm nor cold, but strangely neutral to the touch. Yet that silver-gray stuff constituted the foundation and the walls and probably the ceil, the limits of his world.
Again, Jebrassy needed desperately to know more—to understand. In that regard, he differed from nearly all the breeds he knew, so much so that he wondered if there had been a mistake in his making, if the umbers had dropped him on his head after hauling him out of the crèche. Stork.