Soon, the old men began to arrive. As they topped the hillock and descended into the stands, not one paused to stare at the Needle extending across the sky above their heads. Neither did they gaze at the moon, which sat massively on the razor-backed hills directly before them. The men of the badlands were not dreamers, Churls knew. They woke before sunrise to graze their goats on paperweed and thorny sage, and died defending the animals. No mystery, no mysticism in that. If Adrash chose to destroy the world, they could do nothing to stop it.
Likewise, life would go on just the same if Adrash chose to redeem it. Though Churls did not like the people of the badlands, she felt an odd communion with them. They understood that fate could not be bargained with. It held a person like a mother holds her child, lovingly or with revulsion. One did not get to choose.
The boy Churls was meant to kill stepped into the circle of firelight. He sneered at her disdainfully, but failed to hide the underlying fear. She saw it in the set of his shoulders, the hesitation in his steps.
Looking away, she caught movement before her in the stands. It did not surprise her. She had almost expected it.
A small white figure stood on the hillock, staring into the sky.
EBN BON MARI
THE 16th OF THE MONTH OF SOLDIERS, 12499 MD
THE CITY OF TANSOT, KINGDOM OF STOL
They commenced a light breakfast on Ebn’s balcony when the sun was a finger’s breadth above the horizon. Light fare, Ebn had told Pol. Nothing fancy.
A lie. In truth, she had woken two hours before dawn to oversee the preparations.
Blood warm orange and kiwi juices. Rashl eggs and sheep tripe, scrambled with dandelion greens, scallions, and bitter basil. Earling potato and pigskin fritters with hot mustard aioli for dipping. Pomegranate juice cooled with carbonated rosewater ice cubes. Rapeseed oil and mint-filled pastries. Unleavened anisebread topped with crumbled goat cheese, smoked tigerfish, and shaved horseradish. Black wine from the A’Cas Valley. Finally, lefas bean and lemon zest sorbet she herself had made the night before.
Neither spoke while eating. Pol picked at the fritters and pastries, which saddened Ebn, but his obvious enjoyment of the pomegranate juice and anisebread nearly made up for it. Being so easily swayed by his moods annoyed her, but after seven years together there were reactions she had learned to accept.
She tried not to stare at him as they sipped the wine. This, too, she had expected.
He is not so beautiful, she had tried to tell herself many times. He was not the ideal elderman, certainly: too thickly built, too coarsely featured, and all that white hair. On a darkened street, an observer might mistake him for pure human, not a halfbreed at all. In close quarters, of course, one could not fail to notice that his skin was not a shade of brown, but purple. One would not miss his double-irised eyes, which shined as though they had been plucked straight from an elder corpse—a rare trait even among hybrids.
Such distinctions meant little to him. Even on the coldest of days, he wore little clothing, clearly unembarrassed by the two closed fists raised in relief on his pectoral muscles, a mutation which made it appear as if a man were trying to push his fists through Pol’s body. Of course, mutations were not rare among eldermen, but few chose to display them. Most, like Ebn, had been encouraged since childhood not to broadcast their unnatural heritage. Amongst their own, they till sought to hide who they were.
Pol had been sixteen when she first saw him. Her hearts had leapt against her sternum to see those fists on display. His pride had bewitched her.
This morning, she kept herself from staring by forcing her gaze outward, over the terracotta roofs of lesser structures. Positioned three-quarters of the way up the purple-bricked Esoteric Arts building, her apartment announced her status to the city. From the balcony one could count the brightly stained sails of His Majesty’s Inland Navy, as well as measure the depths of Lake Ten by the varying hues of its bluegreen water.
The view bored and somewhat frightened her, but she pretended interest in order to busy her eyes. Eighty-seven years old, acting like a love-starved youth.
Pol sipped his wine unhurriedly, and Ebn’s eyes drifted to the moon. Bonepale, it sat in the lower quadrant of the quickly brightening sky, unwilling to set for another several hours. Nearly half of the Needle had descended below the horizon. The second largest sphere seemed to rest atop her companion’s head. She squinted, trying for the fifth or sixth time that morning to determine if it spun faster than it had the day before.
It did not appear so, at least not to the naked eye. A relief. She hated the days when a change was obvious. She hated the flutter of fear in her veins as she greeted the sky every morning.
Pol set his empty wine glass on the table. “Thank you for that,” he said.
She smiled. “There is one more thing.” She raised her hand, summoning a servant for the sorbet.
Pol frowned after his first spoonful. “Is this lemon?”
“Yes,” Ebn said, cursing mentally. The man could be so finicky.
He pushed the brass goblet forward with his index clawtip, as if it contained something poisonous.
She shrugged. “No matter.” She waved the servant forward again.
Pol reclined in his chair, legs stretched out under the table. The side of his foot brushed Ebn’s ankle briefly. Like a fool, she inched her calf over until their skins touched lightly. He would not notice, she knew. He was the most preoccupied person she had ever met. Also the most private. His life outside the confines of the Royal Sciences Academy was a complete mystery. Had he friends in the city? He did not seem the type. A lover? Despite their years together, he had never discussed intimacies with her.
He yawned. “I was somewhat disappointed to receive your note yesterday. I was slated for an ascension this morning. Measurements, nothing exciting, but nonetheless... You know the feeling, Ebn. A week without looking down upon the world feels like a week wasted.”
“Yes, I know the feeling,” she said. Outbound mages were loath to miss even one orbital ascension. There were only so many years in their lives, after all. “My apologies for the interruption of your schedule, but I desire your counsel on something. Recently, the changes in the Needle have caused the telescopists some consternation. We have not—”
“What is recently?” he interrupted.
“Several weeks,” she lied automatically. It had in fact been over a year of increasingly erratic changes, but he need not know that. “We have not seen variations of this frequency before, both in the speed and direction of the spheres.”
“Yes,” he said. “I have heard rumors.”
She suspected he had. In fact, he probably knew a great deal more than he let on.
“The fact will be announced to the general academy later today,” she said.
He smirked and gestured to encompass the campus. “You think they will have an answer to the riddle?”
She smiled wanly but did not rise to the jibe. “We cannot keep this to ourselves.”
“Of course we can. We own the telescopes. All information about the Needle is filtered through us. Everything else is myth and foreign hearsay, so easily discounted by the academy. There is no advantage in opening the discussion up. Clearly, the changes reflect a shift in Adrash himself, and finding someone who can explain the god’s mind is not possible. We will have as much luck listening to seers proclaim doom in Vaces Square as we will have listening to the responses of the general academy.”
She fought the temptation to concede the point. Perhaps unavoidably, he had absorbed a great deal of her cynicism. At the same time, he had not yet come to grasp the reality of academy politics: Concessions had to be made in order to achieve one’s goals.