'Congratulations,' I said. The word felt too stiff, too formal. Clumsy.
He focused again and gave me a rueful look. His eyes wanted me to stop him but his pride wouldn't let it happen. He wanted me to make it all go away, like I could when he was a child. Begging my protection from something I couldn't protect him from. It dug into me like a spike.
Then he embraced me, and I held him. The uniform felt wrong on him, the fabric too coarse, too starched. But beneath it was the warm body, the blood and the heart that I made. You couldn't ever let that go. Not really. He was still mine, even though I felt I was abandoning him.
'Write to me,' I murmured.
'I will,' he said. 'I'll use the code. Then they can't censor my letters.'
I laughed, surprised. It had been years since we used the code he invented. A game between mother and son. Our little secret, one we never let his father in on. An echo from a childhood that felt like it was receding moment by moment.
'You still remember it?' he asked.
'I remember,' I said, then clutched him tighter, squeezing him to me. 'I remember.' Later, I made my way out of the hall to a corniced balcony overlooking the ocean. Beyond the glow of the city, past the reach of its powerful shinehouses, waves tossed and swelled in the darkness. Out in the distance tiny clusters of lights floated, disembodied. Ships, making their way backspin towards Mal Eista or Jurew or Vect. The sea was rough, stirred by deep currents and a sharply switching wind, the breath of the earth drawn into stony lungs by enormous systems of convection and pressure which I only dimly understood. Constellations of luminescent lichen and algae streaked the roof of the immense cavern, far above.
Closer by, a pair of Ehru were signalling to each other in a cascade of colours, their tentacles hovering above the water. It was them I was watching, wondering about their language, their thoughts, their behaviour. There was a kind of romance in those vast, mysterious creatures. I admired their aloofness. The Ehru plied the seas and waterways of Eskara and lands beyond, but for all their obvious intelligence they had no interest in communication with our kind. The only contact they had was with the Chandeliers in the deep lakes.
Reitha told me she'd once witnessed several Ehru and two Chandeliers having a conversation, and the lightshow had been the most stunning thing she had ever seen, rivalled only by Callespa's nightly aurora for sheer overwhelming beauty. It made me think I'd chosen the wrong profession. Maybe I should have been studying to be a naturalist like her. Then I remembered that I didn't have a choice, and I remembered why, and my mood soured a little.
I heard Rynn join me on the balcony. He never could move quietly. That was why our masters sent people like him and Frask and Beltei to the front lines, to be the crushing head of the hammer-blow, whereas on the few occasions I was on the battlefield at all it was to conduct surgical strikes. I'm subtle, he's not.
'It's done now,' he said, a hand on my shoulder. He was wary, otherwise he would have put his arm around my waist. He treated me like a bag of snakes sometimes, never sure if something was going to find its way out and bite him.
'He thinks he's made it up to you,' I said, a slight edge to my voice. 'Whatever it is.'
'We made the choice long ago. So did he. Be proud of him.'
'I am proud of him,' I said. 'And I'm scared for him. He's going to war, Rynn. I know how the Gurta are.'
'And I don't?'
'Not like me.' I felt cheap for playing that card, but it had been a long time since it worked on Rynn anyway.
'The war will be over before Ebb Season. Not even the Gurta have the heart for it any more, and people are sick of fighting. It's bad for business.'
'It's good for some. Our Clan, for one.'
'What are you really scared of?'
Blunt enough to work. 'He's our son, Rynn,' I said. 'He's not like you or me. We're Cadre.'
'You can't protect him. He wouldn't let you.'
'But we could have stopped short of sending him off to a battlefield, ' I replied acerbically. The rest didn't need to be said. I didn't want to let him join the military school. I didn't like the way his father pressured him. And I didn't do enough to prevent it.
'It'll be alright,' Rynn said, because it was the best he could offer. And then I felt his arms slide around my waist and his huge chest pressing against my back, and I sighed and relaxed into him.
'It'll be alright,' I agreed, softly. Because the alternative was too terrible to bear.
32
The city hid deep in the earth, far from the day.
It sprawled across the vastness of the cavern, innumerable lanterns and softly glowing windows crowding the swells and dips of the stony landscape. A plague of lights crept up the cavern's sides, and hung from the ceiling in clusters of stalactite dwellings, grim chandeliers of rock. Dimly reflective veins of metal and patches of ghostly, luminescent lichens shone like distant nebulae, occupying the void which the lights had not yet overtaken. Here in the endless dark, the tribes of Eskara had created a starfield, and they called it Veya, the Underhome.
I knew the city welclass="underline" its plazas and alleys, its bridges and monuments, its bars and dens and secret societies. I knew where the pitmen brought their exotic beasts to fight for money; I knew where a person could sell a little of their soul for a skinmark of subtle power; I knew the cut-joints where they made dirty fireclaw potions for the dweomings in the slums. I'd visited the clubs where the aristocracy smoked and drank and made their deals. I'd walked through the sculpture-graveyards in the Greyslopes, their forms heavy with meaning, incomprehensible to anyone but the secretive race that created them. I'd watched a starving child give up his life in his mother's arms while she was too insensible to care.
The city cradled me. Here, among the many, I could be as alone as I wished or as involved as I liked. I stalked Veya like a predator prowling its territory, seeking to know every part. I investigated restlessly, sometimes silent and aloof, sometimes plunging into the society of others. To know the city was to have control over it.
The riverbank was bright and busy, even at this time, when most of Veya was asleep. Sharp-featured men and their elegant consorts sat in the forecourts of expensive bars, sipping from delicate goblets. Courtesans haunted the tables of those men and women who dined alone. The air was full of the scent of cooking fish and the perfumed oil of the lanterns.
I leaned against the rail that separated the promenade from the steep embankment to the river. On the neathways side stood one of Veya's five shinehouses, casting its pale glow high and far. The dwellings of the wealthy coiled and bulged and slid along the water's edge. Some were fashioned like breaking waves, others as swollen seed pods or spiral columns. Stone and wood and ceramics blended into each other in a carefully planned tangle. The architects of Veya were nothing if not creative. This city was glutted with art.
I spotted my contact coming along the promenade. He had that look about him: a man who had mastered his territory, a man who knew the city. There was no need to swagger. People just sensed it, and deferred. Muggers chose other victims, not really understanding why. Merchants spoke to him as an equal, even though he was obviously not rich or important.
'Keren,' I greeted him, as he joined me at the rail.
Keren always looked battered and scruffy, as if he had just hauled himself out of bed. Somehow the fact that he didn't trouble about his appearance only strengthened his aura of weary dangerousness. Two small, implanted silver tusks protruded from just below his bottom lip. A thick head of shaggy black hair hung untidily over his face. His low forehead and grizzled cheeks were skinmarked with curving patterns.