A Respite From Storms Read online

  She hesitated a long, long moment.

  Then, with another sigh, she cast her eyes down. Shaking her head, she patted Scourgey gently. “Come, girl,” she said—and then came in Jasen’s direction.

  He waited until she was close, then pivoted too.

  If not for Kuura, their journey back toward the docks would have been silent.

  12

  Stanislaus worked a long way down the docks, where a promontory jutted a mile and a half into the water. A natural arch had been cut through it, leaving a shadow upon the beach and across pristine waters. It shielded the dock from some of the salty wind, so the smell was weaker under it. Still, boats congregated thickly on either sides of the arch. The vessels here were different: slimline boats with efficient sails, adorned with great lizard’s heads at their prow and scaly, twisting serpentine bodies across their hull were side by side with heavier vessels, built thick and sturdy, with holes for a great many pairs of oars etched into their sides. The oars lay flat against the ships’ sides now. As they widened into an angled paddle at the ends, and lay overlapping each other, they looked almost like birds’ feathers.

  Kuura told Jasen and Alixa where these boats and people hailed from, sometimes with descriptions that were downright unkind.

  Jasen barely took this in. His mind boggled at the rocky arch—and, as they drew under it, the fear that the entire thing was an inch from collapsing upon them.

  Kuura spotted Jasen’s pale-faced look after realizing he had not been replying for some minutes now.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  Jasen nodded upward shakily. “What if it falls?”

  Kuura exploded with laughter. The boom drew the attention of some passers-by, but not many. Scourgey was responsible for far more looks shot their way, none of them particularly pleasant. By comparison, Kuura was fairly banal.

  “What’s so funny?” Jasen asked.

  “Fall on us?” Kuura asked, wiping a tear from his eye. “Why would it? What are you going to do to knock it down? Just ‘cause yeh’ve a knife now, it don’t mean yeh c’n fell the gods’ creations!” And he descended into howled laughter once again.

  The fact that it was a laughing matter assuaged Jasen’s worries, though he couldn’t help but feel a little bit insulted—yet another embarrassment to add to the count for the day. At this rate, his self-esteem would be ground into dust by nightfall.

  He glanced to Alixa, hoping she would share in his worry and make him feel better. But she kept her eyes ahead, downturned, and wouldn’t meet his gaze.

  Guess he was alone then.

  Stalls were erected here too, much less regularly than those spread along the coast closer to the Lady Vizola, yet close enough that air was still suffused with the scents of cooked meat and sweet pastries and rich cheeses.

  Where the arch grew most narrow, no boats were moored. Instead, an expanded pier reached out from the dock. Workers bustled about it, most of them light-skinned and blonde, moving crates and barrels.

  As Kuura approached, he said to Jasen, “There he is.” He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Stanislaus!”

  More than one of the men moved. But for most, it was only a glance to see who had shouted, before turning away and continuing to move their shipments. A man with a tattooed face, though, straightened to look at Kuura with a sharp eye—then he dropped a crate heavily at his feet, and sidestepped it.

  “Kuura, you old loon,” he called. “What’s an old scrote like you doing on my dock?”

  “T’ain’t your dock,” someone grumbled.

  Stanislaus answered by sticking his middle finger up.

  He came round to the edge of the pier. A rag was tucked into his belt. Once white, it was now creased and dirty. Nevertheless, he fished it out and gave his hands a cursory wipe with it. Stuffing it back into place, he appraised Jasen and Alixa without much interest. Scourgey was not of interest either, apparently, because she garnered little more than a glance before Stanislaus’s attention returned to Kuura.

  “Surprised to see you back at the cliffs,” he said. “What’s brought you? Your wife shacked up with your brother yet?”

  Kuura guffawed, like the thought of his wife’s infidelity was the funniest thing he had ever heard of. “Yeh’re a wretch, Stan.” He planted a wide hand on Jasen’s back and shoved him forward. “Meet Jasen. Jasen, this is Stanislaus.”

  Jasen looked up at him nervously. Even discounting the black patterns tattooed down one cheek and around his eye, Stanislaus was an intimidating figure. At least six and a half feet tall, he was blonde-haired, blue-eyed, and rippled with muscle all over. His face was hard, even when he grinned. With practically zero fat clinging to him, his jawline was all angles, his chin very square. The clothes he wore—a thin white shirt, and dark shorts clutched tight to his midriff by a fibrous belt—were just loose enough not to appear glued to his frame.

  His hand was even bigger than Kuura’s. Calloused too, Jasen felt when he shook, the skin so hard and dry you could cut glass with it.

  “And Alixa,” said Kuura.

  She shook too, then backed off.

  “Stan Yalow.”

  That was the full extent to which Stanislaus appeared concerned with the children, for his introduction was said very shortly. Almost immediately his attention was redirected to Kuura, whom he looked at unflinchingly, nary a glance for Jasen and Alixa now that their handshakes had concluded.

  “You know the city’s that way, don’t you?” He pointed over Kuura’s shoulder, back the way they’d come. “Or that captain o’ yours chucked you off the ship and now you’re bartering for dock work?”

  Kuura grinned. “You think you know everything, don’t you?”

  Stanislaus looked him up and down. “Got to say, I don’t think you’ve got dock work in you.”

  “No?”

  “Nah. Too fat round the middle.”

  They both laughed at that, Kuura in his usual, head-thrown-back, hello-world-here-are-all-my-teeth way, Stanislaus with clipped barks that did not sound very amused at all. Jasen and Alixa stood nervously to the side. Unsure what to do, exactly, Jasen forced a smile, although it felt more like grimacing.

  “You have me all wrong,” said Kuura. “I am still employed—and my wife and brother remain only good friends.” He smiled, wide. “What about you, Stan? How has life treated you since last I was here?”

  “Well. I’m still haulin’ boxes around for the likes of you day in, day out.” Turning, Stanislaus spat over the edge of the dock. The glob sailed in an arc and landed in the sea with a heavy plop, as if he’d dropped a stone in the water. “That about sum it up?”

  “Driven as ever,” said Kuura.

  Stan chortled in that hard way again. “You arrive today?”

  “Aye,” Kuura confirmed. “Just a couple of hours ago.”

  “Cargo?”

  “None today.”

  “Thank the gods for that.” Stan spat again. It landed farther out this time. Jasen watched the minute ripples that radiated away with a disgusted fascination. “You run into storms out there?”

  “Several these past few days,” Kuura said.

  “Yeah? Normal ones?”

  Jasen’s breath caught. He glanced back to Stanislaus, waiting.

  “The first was,” said Kuura. “The second …”

  “Not so much, I’m guessin’. Bolts of crazy lightning? Waves like you wouldn’t believe?”

  “You had the same here?”

  Stanislaus shrugged, then shook his head. “Well, sort of,” he amended. “We got the edge of it. Darkened the skies right good and proper though; didn’t let up until next morning. Not much lightning here—but we saw it, out on the horizon, at least when the waves weren’t damn near reaching for the heavens. Colors like I never saw.” Turning his head back slightly, he said, “Romily here thought the world was endin’, didn’t you?”

  Romily, the man who’d told Stanislaus that this was not his dock, said, “That the storm you’r
e wittering about?”

  “Might be.”

  “Meant to be working.”

  “I’m on my break.”

  Romily shook his head. He hefted up another barrel, holding it round the middle. He had to almost waddle to carry it away, as he was shorter than Stanislaus by a good ten inches.

  As he was passing, though, he said, “Yep. Thought the world was ending.” Then he passed and made his way to the other end of the pier.

  “Scares easy,” said Stanislaus, pointing a finger behind him. “Not your standard fare though, is it? Glowing lightning like that … never seen it before. Impressive as it was, I hope not to again.”

  “No,” said Kuura. “I agree with you there. The storm nearly upended the Lady Vizola many times.”

  “Proper caught in it then. What about you, little man? What’d you make of it?”

  Jasen was taken aback. Stanislaus had an intense look about him, probing, and not in the quiet, gentle yet commanding way that Burund had. Taking a question from Stanislaus felt more like being a rabbit cornered by a fox.

  “It was frightening,” Jasen said weakly.

  “Think the world was endin’, did you?”

  Jasen shook his head. Although, under the steely gaze of Stanislaus, he was not sure exactly what he had believed—just that he had better find an answer and give it now, thinking be damned.

  “Braver man than Romily, then.” Back to Kuura. “Unfortunately, stick around the city and you might find more than a few strange happenings still unfoldin’.”

  Kuura raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

  “Been going on now for a few days,” said Stan, “ever since that little boat pulled in down here the morning after the storm.”

  Little boat? Jasen made to ask, wondering at the same time, Baraghosa?

  Stanislaus had not paused, though, and kept on without query.

  “Pair of lights, there were,” said Stan, “floating probably fifty feet above it. White, glowing orbs, they were—like someone’d taken the sun right out of the sky, shrunk it down small, and perched it on the back of a firefly. They kind of drifted about, sort of lazy, you know?” He motioned with his hand, waving it gently up and down. He might’ve been describing the soft ebb of waves—

  But Jasen knew better. Alixa too. They had seen those lights many, many times.

  “Where’s the boat now?” Jasen asked.

  Stanislaus answered him without looking. “Hell if I know. Didn’t come down to my part of the docks—gods be praised. Flynt saw it though—dinky little thing, and didn’t have a sail, but it floated along all by itself, no one working oars or anything. And the man who climbed out of it—well. We see plenty of types working the docks, but …” Stan shook his head. He worked at his chin with a calloused paw, rubbing the hard edges of his jaw. “Skinny thing, but tall. Long, like he’d gone through a press and it’d stretched him out—know what I mean?” He asked this of Jasen.

  This time, Jasen knew exactly what he meant. “Yeah,” he said, nodding. “I know.”

  “Do you know where this man went?” Kuura asked.

  “Do I know?” asked Stanislaus. “Damn near everyone in the Aiger Cliffs must’ve known about it. It was those lights—they followed him. Even when he’d disappeared into the crowd—and that wasn’t easy, for everyone who he passed gave him a bloody wide berth—you could track where he went by those floatin’ lights.” Another shake of the head. “Unnerving, it was. Least we’ll get a good bit of notice when he decides to make his way back to that boat of his to leave the rest of us normal folk alone. Him and his tricks.”

  “What tricks?” Kuura asked.

  Jasen clamped his mouth closed. He’d been about to repeat the question: Where did he go?

  “Air feels weird. Sort of charged. Comes and goes—rarely in the mornings—but in the evenings or at night, when twilight’s comin’ down … that’s when it feels wrong. Like electricity’s going to spark at any moment and burn it all down.”

  “But this is the City of Lightning,” said Alixa.

  “That’s not why they call it that,” Stan replied. “The name comes because power runs off those conduction rods up on the clifftops.” He nodded toward them, and Jasen turned. He could barely see them pointing skyward in the distance, atop the towering rock spires and arches, with their metallic, yet somehow crystalline extrusions.

  “What we’re feelin’ now, though,” Stanislaus went on, “it’s something else. And him, with the lights … he’s the cause of it.”

  “Where did he go?” Jasen asked. His heart was hammering hard in his chest. This answer, he needed now, damn it, now, like no other.

  “Flynt said he went that way.” Stanislaus pointed along the dock the way they’d come. “Just carried on walking up the docks a long time, he said.”

  “But where’s he going?”

  “Don’t know.” Stan paused to spit again. “But from what Flynt said he heard—I’d guess he went there.” And nodded again, up—at the conduction rods overlooking the city.

  13

  “I like Stanislaus,” said Kuura, smiling in that too-wide way of his.

  Alixa frowned. “Why?” she asked in her pointed, blunt way, as if the idea that anyone could like Stanislaus was utter madness.

  Kuura had led Jasen and Alixa back along the docks, past all the food stalls and the Lady Vizola. The docks spread almost the entire length of the extended beach, giving way only now and then for access to the sands. Unlike the Luukessian shoreline, these sands were much disturbed. There were dozens of people in each sandy nook, stretching their legs. Mostly these were children, running from their parents and impressing small footprints in the sand. Not long ago, Jasen would have longed to kick off his boots and step through it like them, feeling it on his toes.

  But his headlong crash as the cart collapsed a few days ago, then Shilara’s last stand as scourge overwhelmed her, was burned into his mind. Sandy shores no longer held any great appeal to him.

  Kuura had led them off the docks at the same arch Jasen had used to enter the city. But instead of going left, he directed them to the right, up a wide road that curved gradually out of sight in the direction of the looming cliffside. The sun had broken past it now, shining with brilliant light. The metals jutting from the cliffs’ sheer walls glared with refracted light. Jasen had to shield his eyes.

  “He talks,” Kuura said in answer to Alixa’s question. “A great deal—more even than me, yes?” He hooted a laugh, three quick owl-like noises, then continued: “It takes little effort to extract information from Stanislaus, and he sees and hears much, working on the docks. Useful features in a contact, no?”

  Alixa pursed her lips. “I thought he was scary.”

  Kuura rumbled with laughter.

  Always laughing. Always.

  Jasen ignored it. The road leading to the cliffs began a steady rise. Having started by caressing the coastline, it now moved inland, up the remnants of the natural hill that had been split into levels for the city. Farther ahead, he could see the road’s terminus. It climbed the cliffside itself, winding up and up. Then, when the cliffs gave over to cones of jagged rock, flattening at their dizzying apex and littered with conduction rods, it clambered up and around those too. How high that was, Jasen didn’t want to think about. He thought instead of the pathways under the rocks, where another path must lead through an arch and farther inland. Kuura said these routes up the cliffsides were the only ways past the Aiger Cliffs and to the rest of the mainland. That meant a little foot traffic, most of it directed the way that Kuura, Jasen and Alixa were going. It also meant horses and carts, which announced their arrival in advance enough to move to one side of the road so they could pass.

  The exertion was taking its toll already. A subtle cramp had started in his midriff, just above his hipbone on the left-hand side. If he pushed on it, it might ease—but then he would look terribly unfit, and after a day of being insulted, effectively being called useless, he didn’t wish to invite any m
ore comments.

  Lucky for him, although Jasen was the reason for this excursion to the clifftops, he was not the focus—not with Kuura dominating.

  “So what do you think of the Aiger Cliffs?” he asked. “Is it everything you had hoped for?”

  “It’s amazing,” said Alixa, turning to look across the city. Not so high up yet, they hadn’t yet scaled even a quarter of the lowest cliff wall, and so much of the city was still level with or above them, toward the rear. But this vantage point gave a bird’s-eye view of the docks receding behind, and the first layer of streets. The hubbub was even more impressive from above. So chaotic, it was incredible that anyone managed to get anywhere. “Are all cities like this?”

  “Are all people like you?” Kuura countered.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Are all people teenaged girls, like you? Are they all your height? Do they all have your braids, or your freckles, or your nose? Do they unpick knots the same way as you, or sniff at new foods and take tiny little bites?”

  “Well, obviously not.”

  “Exactly.” Kuura grinned. “So, no, not all cities are like this. The Aiger Cliffs is but one. There are many—and you will see them, if you should choose.”

  A horse and cart approached from the rear. As he moved over to let it pass, Jasen used the pause in conversation to think about other cities. He could picture them vaguely, based on the same drawings and hand-me-down tales that had fueled his imagination before leaving Terreas. But he’d never have been able to picture the Aiger Cliffs, not in a thousand eons—and he found now that he could not arrange his mental image into any meaningful permutation that might represent a city.

  The old Jasen would have thought that this meant he had no choice but to visit more, to discover them first-hand.

  This Jasen, stifling his wheezes as he climbed higher, hoping that Kuura and Alixa did not turn their attention to him, did not much care. One quest and one only was Jasen’s now—and if Stanislaus was correct, it ended here.