"You know," Yaxi began. She then paused to take a mouthful of rice and beans. Her status in the improvised family known as the Tansons was such that the other two were prepared to wait and see what she believed they knew. "You know," she began again after swallowing, "I thought we'd pretty much agreed on this."
Zokou, disconsolately pushing her own dinner around her bowl, mumbled, "Yeah, but-"
"Before we came to the Cities we decided – well, not actually what to do. 'Cause something that ambitious would be laughable. But what we weren't going to do and this kind of came top of the list. You, missy, weren't going to go out alone and get spotted till we'd got you sorted out. That was, like, pretty unambiguous wasn't it? I understood it, didn't you, hon?"
The last remark was addressed to Radav. From his nominal place at the head of the family table he was observing the scene in a detached manner. He nodded. "Aye. Not much else, but I got that one."
"And one semi-millisecond after we go out and leave you alone, what happens? Whoosh. Heels lost in a cloud of dust, out you speed-"
"But no-one did see me," Zokou interrupted. "I checked no-one was about."
"You kind of sure bout that? 'Cause they say each street's got a thousand eyes and, boy, you'd better believe this one's got a thousand and one mouths."
"OK, they could've seen me coming out of the building. Not out of this flat though. I checked the corridor was empty this time. They wouldn't connect me to you and I don't see…" Zokou trailed away. Just say you're sorry, an inner voice was telling her, and move on. Neither Yaxi nor Radav would hold a grudge. They weren't even angry with her now. They were just mimicking the forms. In all the months since they had careered into her life and adopted a stance sometimes as her bodyguards, sometimes her tutors and sometimes her foster parents, she had never witnessed that emotion. She had watched them fighting for their lives, and her life. She had seen them cut creatures in half with one swing of a sword and slay monsters with a single, precisely aimed arrow through an eye and starving and wounded, close to desperation and close to death. But never angry. Certainly not with her, and for such a trivial cause as her disobeying an instruction. Which wasn't the only reason why she loved them so much but remained a compelling one. So she said, "Sorry." And when Yaxi then continued the argument, Zokou knew that was simply because she was enjoying it.
"Why did you have to sneak out and see the marvels of the Cities anyway? We showed you the marvels of the Cities when we got here. You know, that's them. Like 'em or lump 'em."
"You whisked me round at top speed in the carriage. Half the time you had a blanket over my head."
We cut eyeholes in it, didn't we? And drew a little smiley face on it."
"Aye, we never told you 'bout that last bit," Radav said.
"Why's it so important I stay hidden anyway?" Zokou demanded.
Yaxi sighed. "Don’t' wind me up while I'm eating, Zok. If I get pissed while I'm swallowing something, I tend to choke on it. And that's so not a sight you want to see while you're eating."
"OK, I know about keeping it secret about what… what I can do. But why can't anyone know I'm living with you?"
"Well, there's a few reasons," Yaxi said. "But the main one, which, you know, I have explained before is that as a couple, me and fatso here fit. Guys take one look at us and think, OK, got 'em sorted out. We're, well, we're thugs. We're the dudes who hang round the taverns and join the mercenary gangs and sometimes get hired to do the tasks you so wish governments wouldn't keep doing. even us renting a swish pad like this, people can sort of understand that. They'll be guessing we've just done a big job, probably the sort where the wages are kind of locked inside a bank vault. So we fit. But you so, so don't, sweetie. They take one gawp at you and they'll start thinking, what the hell's going on? And then they might, you know, start asking questions."
"I can do all that stuff too," Zokou said a little sullenly. "You've been showing me how."
"Yeah, we all know that but no-one else does and they wouldn’t' guess it if they tried for a year. I mean, look at you."
Look at her. Zokou's features were pretty and slightly unusual. She had long, fine hair, very high cheekbones and eyes which were very round in the middle and tapered at the outer edges. She had the same weather-beaten cast to her skin and hard-wearing comfort to her drab clothes as Yaxi and Radav. She was built far smaller, however, having clearly spent most of her sixteen years scrabbling for food. Nor did she seem a natural member of a street gang or even a brothel. She was somehow too asexual for the latter and too timid, even inside the flat, for the former. She looked like a young apprentice to a seamstress; that is, a genuine seamstress.
"Well, if you look so tough and I look so puny, you could say you've kidnapped me," she ventured.
"That one'd kind of get a hole punched in it if they saw you, you know, coming and going as you pleased," Yaxi countered. "I don't want to be a hard-on about this but we've got to manage appearances here. And until we figure out what the hell to do about yours, you'll sort of have to keep yourself under wraps for a while. Otherwise this thing we laughably call 'a plan' might get one of its legs knocked out and just tumbling right down-"
"You ever gonna eat that or just wave it around?" Radav interrupted. He indicated Yaxi's food, piled onto her spoon but neglected for some time now.
"Excuse me. In the middle of an oratory here."
"You're never owt else. Amount you talk during dinner, it's no wonder you never get fat. Burn off more calories than you swallow."
In reply, Yaxi brought her spoon back and catapulted the rice at Radav's face with pleasing accuracy. "Don't taunt an archer, hon. Everything's a potential missile to us."
Zokou smiled, sitting back and letting the memories of the day pour through her. She was, she realised, still slightly dazed. She wasn't a country girl seeing a city for the first time. She had been born in Port Blacksheln, a vast sprawl which clung to a lot of the coast of another continent like a malignant tumour. But Port Blacksheln was far different to the Triple Cities. It had no industry, no parks, no avenues, no spectacles. It had no real law and barely a government, simply one man whose gang was slightly bigger than anyone else's. The only thin astounding about Port Blacksheln was its squalor and its capacity for violence.
The Cities were more than a hamlet writ large, however. They ran the greatest and richest country in the world. And they were not shy about advertising this fact. Still unsure of herself, unwilling to explore strange byways, Zokou had mostly revisited sites she had already seen. All were worth another viewing. Huwdone House, base of the federal government, a vast and unearthly cube of white marble and black windows. Parliament Square which stood in front of it, with its sombre mansions and dizzying chequerboard paving stones. Vellers Square close by, where two great trading routes collided in a deafening band which splashed every colour, most of them lurid, across the buildings. The Lewis Avenue sector in the north-west, hosting the shrill, brash townhouses of the wealthiest people on earth. The astonishing markets of the Milliks Triangle sector, where every item ever made, hunted, fished or grown could seemingly be purchased.
That was merely in Jalkin. Zokou had gone to the city of Yaleth too as well, to walk between the 'giant's handrails' of the Reckstag Bridge which crossed the River Brail. To see the Tukas Halls of Justice, once a king's palace, now wrestled into the services of a democratic government by an armlock which still didn't hide its menace. To gape at the Church of Garrath on top of Royal Hill, the gigantic logical conclusion of a religion obsessed by spectacle inside a land with the same tastes. Finally to Forgar to see one of the dynamos of each edifice. The creatures by the river generally called workshops but which looked like fortresses. Sardacs the tailors, the Ocheverry Printing Works, the Zierlona carpenters, Charlac Carriage Makers; each one accumulating more fame and profit through the scale of their production than the most skilled craftsman ever could.
Yes, they had shown her all this when they first arrived. They hurried from one sight to another, however; and if they didn't actually put a sack over her head then the shutters on the carriage were always half-drawn. Zokou was left with a montage of amazing images which didn't make sense, didn't fit together and didn't seem real. By exploring on her own she hoped to start the first steps towards comprehension.
She failed in that respect. Standing at the foot of each vertiginous structure, it was even harder to believe that mankind alone could ever build anything so great, so beautiful or so dreadful. But she was able to learn a little more about the Cities. Her walk had reminded her that it wasn't simply about the architecture. The people were different too. And they were almost amazing. What struck her most of all was their freedom. She noticed the most vivid examples, the ones whose notoriety had spread. The demagogues bawling slanderous obscenities outside each Town Hall. The vendors almost on the doorstep of Huwdone House selling newsheets containing detailed criticisms of the actions of Huwdone House. The street performers often enacting what was basically unapologetic pornography. Yet Zokou sensed the liberty everywhere. In the way men and even women moved and talked, in their stride and their demeanour. There was a certain amount of belligerence there, an awareness that their freedom had to be defended constantly. But their confidence didn't come from their weapons – to her amazement, Zokou saw that almost nobody was armed. It flowed from a sense of what they belonged to.
Yaxi and Radav possessed it too. They were Christotans and the Cities, after all, was simply the epitome of Christoté. Strip away their bows and swords and they would still be free. And they offered Zokou the same rights. Just as she had been preparing to shatter her childhood liberty with a life of drudgery, they had shown her the road out. Under their protection, to some extent, and under their tutelage. However, every time they chastised her she sensed them waiting and hoping for her to defend her independence.
"You know," she began cautiously, "I saw a lot of wizards around today. Or at least, men-"
"Yeah, I'm gonna stop you there," Yaxi said. "And ask if these 'wizards' were sort of guys in fairground tents with a hell of a lot of sequins and signs saying 'The Amazing Montou: Gods Are Astounded By His Powers.'"
"Well, OK, mostly. But they can't all be frauds, can they?"
"Er, just one question in return here. Why not."
"We could try talking to one or two at least. If your friend… If you can't find him or something. It can't do any harm."
"Hmm. People messing about with magic without really knowing what they're doing. I wonder, can that possibly, possibly do any harm?"
"Remember that damn great desert we crossed?" Radav said. "They reckon that were made by folks messing with magic."
"So it wasn't the sun then?" Zokou returned.
"A pretty neat zing there," Yaxi smiled. "But that aside I think we'll stick with the 'our guy or broke' plan for now. And if we really can't find where he's skulking, well…"
"We're buggered," Radav suggested.
"So I've got to hide in here till you find him?" Zokou demanded.
Yaxi glanced at her husband. "No, I suppose not. I guess we went a little bit, you know, insane on that diktat. If you really want to make a grand coming out, blowing kisses at the neighbours and the alley cats, the street's yours."
"I never wanted-"
"Yeah, I know. But if you want, you can come with us to dinner at the family who live downstairs the night after next."
"Some nosy woman, her husband and three screaming brats," Radav said. "Should be a real treat."
Zokou glared at them. "You were gonna sneak off to a party and not even tell me?"
"I think the plan was to kind of camouflage it as another trip to the Last Drop Inn, wasn't it?" Yaxi asked Radav, who nodded.
"For the love of… How many times have you done that before?""Well, this would've been our first," Yaxi grinned. "And hey, given that, we're pretty good at it aren't we?"
Zokou, disconsolately pushing her own dinner around her bowl, mumbled, "Yeah, but-"
"Before we came to the Cities we decided – well, not actually what to do. 'Cause something that ambitious would be laughable. But what we weren't going to do and this kind of came top of the list. You, missy, weren't going to go out alone and get spotted till we'd got you sorted out. That was, like, pretty unambiguous wasn't it? I understood it, didn't you, hon?"
The last remark was addressed to Radav. From his nominal place at the head of the family table he was observing the scene in a detached manner. He nodded. "Aye. Not much else, but I got that one."
"And one semi-millisecond after we go out and leave you alone, what happens? Whoosh. Heels lost in a cloud of dust, out you speed-"
"But no-one did see me," Zokou interrupted. "I checked no-one was about."
"You kind of sure bout that? 'Cause they say each street's got a thousand eyes and, boy, you'd better believe this one's got a thousand and one mouths."
"OK, they could've seen me coming out of the building. Not out of this flat though. I checked the corridor was empty this time. They wouldn't connect me to you and I don't see…" Zokou trailed away. Just say you're sorry, an inner voice was telling her, and move on. Neither Yaxi nor Radav would hold a grudge. They weren't even angry with her now. They were just mimicking the forms. In all the months since they had careered into her life and adopted a stance sometimes as her bodyguards, sometimes her tutors and sometimes her foster parents, she had never witnessed that emotion. She had watched them fighting for their lives, and her life. She had seen them cut creatures in half with one swing of a sword and slay monsters with a single, precisely aimed arrow through an eye and starving and wounded, close to desperation and close to death. But never angry. Certainly not with her, and for such a trivial cause as her disobeying an instruction. Which wasn't the only reason why she loved them so much but remained a compelling one. So she said, "Sorry." And when Yaxi then continued the argument, Zokou knew that was simply because she was enjoying it.
"Why did you have to sneak out and see the marvels of the Cities anyway? We showed you the marvels of the Cities when we got here. You know, that's them. Like 'em or lump 'em."
"You whisked me round at top speed in the carriage. Half the time you had a blanket over my head."
We cut eyeholes in it, didn't we? And drew a little smiley face on it."
"Aye, we never told you 'bout that last bit," Radav said.
"Why's it so important I stay hidden anyway?" Zokou demanded.
Yaxi sighed. "Don’t' wind me up while I'm eating, Zok. If I get pissed while I'm swallowing something, I tend to choke on it. And that's so not a sight you want to see while you're eating."
"OK, I know about keeping it secret about what… what I can do. But why can't anyone know I'm living with you?"
"Well, there's a few reasons," Yaxi said. "But the main one, which, you know, I have explained before is that as a couple, me and fatso here fit. Guys take one look at us and think, OK, got 'em sorted out. We're, well, we're thugs. We're the dudes who hang round the taverns and join the mercenary gangs and sometimes get hired to do the tasks you so wish governments wouldn't keep doing. even us renting a swish pad like this, people can sort of understand that. They'll be guessing we've just done a big job, probably the sort where the wages are kind of locked inside a bank vault. So we fit. But you so, so don't, sweetie. They take one gawp at you and they'll start thinking, what the hell's going on? And then they might, you know, start asking questions."
"I can do all that stuff too," Zokou said a little sullenly. "You've been showing me how."
"Yeah, we all know that but no-one else does and they wouldn’t' guess it if they tried for a year. I mean, look at you."
Look at her. Zokou's features were pretty and slightly unusual. She had long, fine hair, very high cheekbones and eyes which were very round in the middle and tapered at the outer edges. She had the same weather-beaten cast to her skin and hard-wearing comfort to her drab clothes as Yaxi and Radav. She was built far smaller, however, having clearly spent most of her sixteen years scrabbling for food. Nor did she seem a natural member of a street gang or even a brothel. She was somehow too asexual for the latter and too timid, even inside the flat, for the former. She looked like a young apprentice to a seamstress; that is, a genuine seamstress.
"Well, if you look so tough and I look so puny, you could say you've kidnapped me," she ventured.
"That one'd kind of get a hole punched in it if they saw you, you know, coming and going as you pleased," Yaxi countered. "I don't want to be a hard-on about this but we've got to manage appearances here. And until we figure out what the hell to do about yours, you'll sort of have to keep yourself under wraps for a while. Otherwise this thing we laughably call 'a plan' might get one of its legs knocked out and just tumbling right down-"
"You ever gonna eat that or just wave it around?" Radav interrupted. He indicated Yaxi's food, piled onto her spoon but neglected for some time now.
"Excuse me. In the middle of an oratory here."
"You're never owt else. Amount you talk during dinner, it's no wonder you never get fat. Burn off more calories than you swallow."
In reply, Yaxi brought her spoon back and catapulted the rice at Radav's face with pleasing accuracy. "Don't taunt an archer, hon. Everything's a potential missile to us."
Zokou smiled, sitting back and letting the memories of the day pour through her. She was, she realised, still slightly dazed. She wasn't a country girl seeing a city for the first time. She had been born in Port Blacksheln, a vast sprawl which clung to a lot of the coast of another continent like a malignant tumour. But Port Blacksheln was far different to the Triple Cities. It had no industry, no parks, no avenues, no spectacles. It had no real law and barely a government, simply one man whose gang was slightly bigger than anyone else's. The only thin astounding about Port Blacksheln was its squalor and its capacity for violence.
The Cities were more than a hamlet writ large, however. They ran the greatest and richest country in the world. And they were not shy about advertising this fact. Still unsure of herself, unwilling to explore strange byways, Zokou had mostly revisited sites she had already seen. All were worth another viewing. Huwdone House, base of the federal government, a vast and unearthly cube of white marble and black windows. Parliament Square which stood in front of it, with its sombre mansions and dizzying chequerboard paving stones. Vellers Square close by, where two great trading routes collided in a deafening band which splashed every colour, most of them lurid, across the buildings. The Lewis Avenue sector in the north-west, hosting the shrill, brash townhouses of the wealthiest people on earth. The astonishing markets of the Milliks Triangle sector, where every item ever made, hunted, fished or grown could seemingly be purchased.
That was merely in Jalkin. Zokou had gone to the city of Yaleth too as well, to walk between the 'giant's handrails' of the Reckstag Bridge which crossed the River Brail. To see the Tukas Halls of Justice, once a king's palace, now wrestled into the services of a democratic government by an armlock which still didn't hide its menace. To gape at the Church of Garrath on top of Royal Hill, the gigantic logical conclusion of a religion obsessed by spectacle inside a land with the same tastes. Finally to Forgar to see one of the dynamos of each edifice. The creatures by the river generally called workshops but which looked like fortresses. Sardacs the tailors, the Ocheverry Printing Works, the Zierlona carpenters, Charlac Carriage Makers; each one accumulating more fame and profit through the scale of their production than the most skilled craftsman ever could.
Yes, they had shown her all this when they first arrived. They hurried from one sight to another, however; and if they didn't actually put a sack over her head then the shutters on the carriage were always half-drawn. Zokou was left with a montage of amazing images which didn't make sense, didn't fit together and didn't seem real. By exploring on her own she hoped to start the first steps towards comprehension.
She failed in that respect. Standing at the foot of each vertiginous structure, it was even harder to believe that mankind alone could ever build anything so great, so beautiful or so dreadful. But she was able to learn a little more about the Cities. Her walk had reminded her that it wasn't simply about the architecture. The people were different too. And they were almost amazing. What struck her most of all was their freedom. She noticed the most vivid examples, the ones whose notoriety had spread. The demagogues bawling slanderous obscenities outside each Town Hall. The vendors almost on the doorstep of Huwdone House selling newsheets containing detailed criticisms of the actions of Huwdone House. The street performers often enacting what was basically unapologetic pornography. Yet Zokou sensed the liberty everywhere. In the way men and even women moved and talked, in their stride and their demeanour. There was a certain amount of belligerence there, an awareness that their freedom had to be defended constantly. But their confidence didn't come from their weapons – to her amazement, Zokou saw that almost nobody was armed. It flowed from a sense of what they belonged to.
Yaxi and Radav possessed it too. They were Christotans and the Cities, after all, was simply the epitome of Christoté. Strip away their bows and swords and they would still be free. And they offered Zokou the same rights. Just as she had been preparing to shatter her childhood liberty with a life of drudgery, they had shown her the road out. Under their protection, to some extent, and under their tutelage. However, every time they chastised her she sensed them waiting and hoping for her to defend her independence.
"You know," she began cautiously, "I saw a lot of wizards around today. Or at least, men-"
"Yeah, I'm gonna stop you there," Yaxi said. "And ask if these 'wizards' were sort of guys in fairground tents with a hell of a lot of sequins and signs saying 'The Amazing Montou: Gods Are Astounded By His Powers.'"
"Well, OK, mostly. But they can't all be frauds, can they?"
"Er, just one question in return here. Why not."
"We could try talking to one or two at least. If your friend… If you can't find him or something. It can't do any harm."
"Hmm. People messing about with magic without really knowing what they're doing. I wonder, can that possibly, possibly do any harm?"
"Remember that damn great desert we crossed?" Radav said. "They reckon that were made by folks messing with magic."
"So it wasn't the sun then?" Zokou returned.
"A pretty neat zing there," Yaxi smiled. "But that aside I think we'll stick with the 'our guy or broke' plan for now. And if we really can't find where he's skulking, well…"
"We're buggered," Radav suggested.
"So I've got to hide in here till you find him?" Zokou demanded.
Yaxi glanced at her husband. "No, I suppose not. I guess we went a little bit, you know, insane on that diktat. If you really want to make a grand coming out, blowing kisses at the neighbours and the alley cats, the street's yours."
"I never wanted-"
"Yeah, I know. But if you want, you can come with us to dinner at the family who live downstairs the night after next."
"Some nosy woman, her husband and three screaming brats," Radav said. "Should be a real treat."
Zokou glared at them. "You were gonna sneak off to a party and not even tell me?"
"I think the plan was to kind of camouflage it as another trip to the Last Drop Inn, wasn't it?" Yaxi asked Radav, who nodded.
"For the love of… How many times have you done that before?""Well, this would've been our first," Yaxi grinned. "And hey, given that, we're pretty good at it aren't we?"
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