He studied her while Frog landed on the gunwale and stared, impatient for the next piece of biscuit.‘Oh?Then what are you doing here?The ghosts of Parwysh mortals can little help you read ancient First Folk books.’
They were drifting close to old, deep wounds now.Parts of herself she would rather not reveal—to anyone, let alone Colm.
‘The ways of the Library are difficult to grasp,’ she said.‘It would take decades of education for you to comprehend the mysteries that underlie my quest.’
She smiled mysteriously at him and sipped her flask of ship’s rum.He rolled his eyes and, thankfully, changed the subject.
All through these days of lounging and conversation, she battled the thought that taking him to the pitiful little cot in her cabin would be quite a pleasant way to pass the time.The taut arch of his waist when he stretched.The fascinating muscular geometries where his lower arms met his torso, about where an ordinary person’s floating ribs would be.The thought of those arms and those broad upper hands closing around her own shoulders, while his delicate, lower hands traced down the line of her hip…
In her own awkward adolescence, she had learned to navigate such feelings according to the City’s sexual mores—which were, in a word, relaxed.There, she might simply mention to Colm that she found him attractive and would be willing to do various things with him, and then discover his opinion on the matter—to either her disappointment or delight.But in the world beyond the walls, sexual expression had proven far more complicated.First, by the twin risks of pregnancy and disease, and second, by that loathsome concept of currency.
Fola was not only Colm’s companion, but his employer, a word that carried with it the dynamics of power, of money.Of wondering whether he would say yes because she was paying him or yes because he really wanted to.A conundrum only made worse when she occasionally caught his eyes on her.Studying her face while she read one of her books, or tracing the curve of her hip while she leaned over the gunwale to watch the horizon.Lingering glances that might have been clear indicators in the City, but his eyes always darted quickly away.The complexities of their relationship discouraged her from pressing the issue.So she didn’t ask, but couldn’t help staring herself from time to time.Which only made her want to ask him more, which made her feel guilty.Guilt she assuaged by drinking a great deal more of the ship’s supply of rum than was strictly healthy—a habit that left her vomiting over the gunwale more than once.
After three days of this, the captain cut off her access to alcohol, regardless of what she offered to pay.Which seemed to undercut the entire point of currency, from her perspective.But what did she know?
Bored on her own, made problematically libidinous in close quarters with Colm and no longer able to muddle through with the help of an alcoholic fog, she sought stimulation and company in her place of last resort—making a long-neglected report to Arno.She waited until near the appointed time for what were supposed to be their regular, monthly check-ins—gauging by the sun and some quick calculations to translate its position above her to its position over the city—then locked herself in her cabin.Years of practice had made drawing the complex circle for astral projection simple enough, even on the dim, mildewy boards of a rolling ship at sea.Finding her centre was somewhat more difficult, but after what felt like an hour of slow breathing in the close confines of her cabin, seated at the nexus of the circle’s design, she felt a sudden inward-falling.She opened her eyes on the familiar tiled mosaics that lined the walls of Arno’s study.
‘Fola!’Arno yelped in astonishment.His bird, a diminutive heron with feathers the pale blue of a robin’s egg, squawked and leapt to the far corner of the room in a flutter of wings that scattered a handful of papers.
She stood slowly, careful not to touch anything, hovering weightless in her astral body—a projection of her mind given hazy shape, not unlike that of a ghost, and sent by the careful design of her spell to visit Arno.This was not so complex a projection as to allow the transmission of physical sensation, only sight and sound.Touching anything could overwhelm the spell’s limited capacity and shatter her connection, with nauseating results.
Arno sat behind his desk.The latest of the Library’s tomes he was attempting to decipher lay open before him.A glowbulb grafted onto the wall behind him stood open, casting its steady illumination throughout the room.Its light glittered on the faceted tiles of the mosaic.Beside it, Arno’s heron preened in agitation.
‘By the Tree and all its birds, Fola, you startled me,’ Arno muttered, peering over the top of his spectacles.His smooth chin disappeared into the folds of his neck.‘Are you all right?’
‘It’s nothing, I’m fine!’Fola snapped—letting perhaps a bit more of her frustrations regarding Colm show through.‘You ought to have been expecting me.’
‘Once an agent in the field starts missing appointments, I begin to expect their bird to return alone.’Arno sniffed in annoyance, depositing his pen on the desk and carefully marking his place in the First Folk volume with a slip of paper.‘I’d assumed I would have to wait at least a full gestational cycle, plus a few years for your memories to reconstitute, before I’d get any explanation for your absence.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Fola said.‘I was in Ulun.’
His bushy eyebrows shot up at that.
‘Fola, the rumours out of that country…’
‘I know.’Fola shivered in her astral form.She was not the first Citizen to venture there, but had been the first to stay for any length of time.Those who had gone before her brought back tales of the dread engines, of monstrous armies and eternal war.
‘Everything we’d heard was real,’ she said.‘The sorcerer-kings used their people like toys.Sacrificed them to those towers of bone.Made monstrosities of them to wage a pointless domination game.’
‘What could you hope to learn from such horrors?’Arno asked, his voice gentle, but not free from an accusation of recklessness.
‘I had no choice.Every other lead ran dry.I thought, maybe, something of how the dread engines twist body and soul…’ She shook her head.‘How could the First Folk—the same people who made the City—have made such a thing?’
‘Not the same people, presumably,’ Arno pointed out.‘Just as we are not like the sorcerer-kings.It is a mistake to assume all the First Folk were aligned.You did not find what you had hoped, I take it?’
‘No.’She winced.Now they came to the reason she had so long delayed this conversation.‘Arno, such horrors could never yieldanythingof value.Even if they could, letting that go on… I couldn’t.I couldn’t just leave the sorcerer-kings to rule and their people to suffer.’
‘Fola…’
‘It took some time,’ she said.‘But I found a way to disable them.The dread engines.’
Arno leaned back in his chair.His heron peered at her down the blade of its beak.
‘That is not what we do,’ Arno said.‘Ours is not to meddle.You know this.The wider world abides by its own order.An order that might seem terrible to us.But we must not let our power make us tyrants, no matter how benevolent our motivation.’
‘You did not see what I saw,’ Fola snapped.
‘It sounds dreadful,’ Arno allowed.‘But your journey there was misguided to begin with.Without having witnessed it myself, I find it uncomfortable to criticise how you dealt with what you found.I’ll make a record in the logbook, and I caution you against such involvement in the future.You must be careful not to let the wider world reshape you.You must stay true to who you are.’He shook his head and crossed his hands on the desk.‘How goes the search, otherwise?’
