“Where to, sah?”
Gundhalinu moved forward to the edge of the dock, looking down into the boat.. Its outer hull was a silvery gray that made it one with the water surface, the fog, the stones of the quay… . But its interior, its single flat, wide seat, the elaborate carving on its prow, were decorated in strident, eye-stunning colors, alive with intricate geometric designs that had been patiently painted by hand.
He looked up again, trying to see the man’s face. Most of it was shadowed by the sodden gray hood, but he could see that the boatman was a local—by the golden icast of his skin, the dark eyes with a slight epicanthic fold.
“Sah?” the boatman said patiently, gesturing him forward.
Gundhalinu hesitated, realizing how absurd he looked, and trying not to think |about it. “I need to get back to the upper city. But I haven’t any money.”
The boatman chuckled. “Nor anything to keep it in either, even.”
Gundhalinu smiled wearily, and shrugged. “Thanks anyway.” He began to turn |away, ready to start walking.
“Well, I’ll take you up for the company, then,” the boatman said. “Business is slow before dawn, and you look to be a stranger far from home.”
Gundhalinu turned back, so quickly that he almost slipped on the slick pavement. Moving more cautiously, he climbed down into the boat and settled himself on the seat. He turned to look up again at the man standing behind him. It was no one he knew; he was certain of that. “The universe is home to us all.” He murmured the traditional response, still watching the other man’s face.
“So it is,” the boatman said noncommittally, looking away again as he pushed off from the pier. He propelled the boat on up the canal with brisk, sure motions of his pole. After a time, he ventured, “Must have been quite a night, sah.”
“Yes, it was,” Gundhalinu said. “It certainly was that.” He watched the buildings drift past like fragments of dreams, made rootless by the fog, as if they were moving and the boat was motionless.
“A young lady, sah? Perhaps then an unexpected husband—?”
Gundhalinu glanced back at him, and shook his head, smiling. “No.”
“Too much to dream, then?”
“What—?” He broke off, remembering. To the locals that meant drugs. And yet when he thought about it, it made more genuine sense than anything he could have said himself about what he had experienced tonight. “Yes. I suppose so.”
That answer seemed to satisfy the boatman, and he fell silent. Gundhalinu kept his own silence, his numb, shivering body hunched over itself, aching for permission to go to sleep sitting upright. But his mind refused to let go, fixating on one thing, the final thing out of all he had learned—he could communicate with another sibyl. What had happened to him at Fire Lake was not a fluke. All he needed was to know that sibyl’s name. And he knew her name … her face, her body, her world… . The fog seemed to whiten, like fields of snow … Moon.
“Here we are, sah.”
He started awake; looked up, realizing that he had nodded off, that they had arrived at the Memorial Arch that marked the boundary between the upper and lower sections of Foursgate, between street and canal, land and sea. Here he could find transportation that would accept a credit number, or would at least take him to his own door and wait while he fetched his card to pay for the ride.
The boat bumped adroitly against the pylons of the dock. The boatman held the craft steady as Gundhalmu got to his feet.
“I don’t know how to thank you—” he began, but the boatman shook his head.
“No need, sah. Only take some free advice, then, from one who knows this world: Watch out for the ones who did that to you. They’ll fill your mind up with too many of their dreams, until you can’t think clearly anymore. What they sell you isn’t all true, and it isn’t all harmless. Be on your guard, when you mix in those circles.” He held out his hand, stood waiting to help Gundhalinu make the unsteady step across onto solid ground.
“Yes,” Gundhalinu murmured uncertainly. “Yes, I will… .”He took the proffered hand; felt an unmistakable, hidden pattern in the brush of the boatman’s fingers. He returned it, and felt the grip tighten warmly over his own before he stepped onto the pier.
“Blessed be, sah,” the boatman said. “It’s a privilege I don’t have every day, giving a ride to a famous person like yourself….” He pushed away from the dock.
“Wait—!” Gundhalinu looked up, gesturing the boatman back. The boatman raised his own hand in a farewell salute as his boat drifted on into the mist.
Gundhalinu stood silently, gazing after him until he was lost from sight.
ONDINEE: Razuma
Kedalion Niburu leaned against the warm side of the hovercraft, breathing in the parched, spice-scented air of the marketplace, taking in the color-splashed scene with mixed emotions as he waited for Reede Kullervo’s return. He glanced diagonally across the street at a mudbrick wall topped by iron spikes. From behind its heavy wooden gate, he could hear the unmistakable screams of someone in serious pain The someone in question was not Reede, which meant that the visit was proceeding as planned.
The local dealer behind that gate had been cutting Reede’s product with inferior drugs, or so he’d heard. When he was in one of his moods, Reede liked to set matters straight personally, and he’d been in one of his moods today, when he’d kicked Kedahon out of bed at dawn, calling him a lazy son of a bitch.
Damn him. Kedalion took a deep breath. At least it had gotten them out of the citadel for the day. Humbaba didn’t like it when Reede did his own dirty work … but then, Reede didn’t care, and even Humbaba seemed powerless to stop him.
It seemed impossible that it had been less than three years, in subjective time, since he had gone to work for Reede Kullervo … since he had, more accurately, come under Reede’s thumb. He felt as though he had been Kullervo’s private property forever; even though he still remembered as vividly as if it were yesterday the day he had come to work for Humbaba’s cartel. Like a near-fatal wound, it was not something he was ever likely to forget: that day when he had finally admitted to himself that Reede Kullervo’s power and influence were actually as great as Reede had claimed; that Kedalion Niburu had become a nonperson, who would starve to death on the streets of Razuma’s port town before anyone would hire him for any job whatsoever—because Reede had put out the word that he was spoken for. With the Prajna impounded for docking fees and the red debit figure on his nonfunctional credit card showing larger each day, he had finally swallowed his pride and sold himself—and a willing Ananke—into this golden servitude.
He sighed, pushing the memory back into a closet in his mind, where he sometimes managed to keep it forgotten for days at a time. He had to admit, in spite of everything, that there were worse jobs, worse positions he could be in… .He could be the dealer getting the shit kicked out of him behind that wall across the street, for instance.
He inched farther into the hovercraft’s shade. The heat made him dizzy; the sweat on his skin dried almost instantly, but even that wasn’t enough to make him feel cool. At least the heat was predictable. Razuma was as close as he had come to a home in a long time, and he was glad enough to be back in town after their latest trip offworld.
His travels with Reede were neither as frequent nor—as far as he could tell—as hazardous to his health as his former solo runs. So far they had been offworld twice in the time he had worked for Reede. And the job paid a hell of a lot better, just as Reede had promised him. But the fact that he never knew what the trips were for—was never given even a clue about what Reede wanted, or got out of, those journeys—preyed on his nerves in a different sort of way; just as being stuck on Ondinee for the majority of his time, playing glorified chauffeur to a manic depressive, did.