Minutes passed and Lasha continued to struggle, at one point falling into the pool. As he pulled himself out the woman looked around and extended her fingers as if she were pointing at something that wasn’t there. When Lasha emerged from the pool, he stepped around the woman and then ran at her again. Vilu realized, then, that she had not been attacking him but was trying to prevent him from restraining her.
Just then someone came striding from one of the buildings toward the two combatants. It was a tall young woman with the posture of a great, proud statue. With a sudden intake of air, Vilu recognized her from glimpses at the airship mooring tower where he sometimes sat and watched the great airship being loaded before taking to the skies: it was Standor Qala, undoubtedly here because this was where she had apprenticed. No doubt she was to meet her prized vessel and fly it to Aankhaan for the night’s festivities. Qala was one of Galderkhaan’s four Standors, and the sole commander of the fleet that plied the skies above the seas—and was likely to remain so, now that Femora Azha was said to be in trouble for violence. Qala looked godlike in her airship regalia, a tight leather tunic and ankle-length skirt with silver bands and markings that caught the sunlight. A red cloth pouch hung from her belt and fishbone clips clattered in her dark, shoulder-length hair as she moved. The woman put her arms around the other woman’s shoulders and pulled her back.
“Stop this!” Qala said at the same time. “Get back, Lasha!”
“She began the struggle!” the old man cried. Aided by the Standor, he sought to enforce his control of the courtyard.
Their communication was brief and superficial because their hands were engaged, unable to add nuance. All the while, the woman fought to get away from them. With powerful hands, Qala grabbed the woman’s black tunic and pulled so hard that poor Lasha, whom the stranger was still clutching, went with her, stumbling to one side but tearing free of his assailant’s hands. The woman’s fingers remained in motion, however, moving fast and wide, a gesture that Vilu had never seen used in speech.
Because it is fighting, he thought. The language makes no sense because violence makes no sense.
Overcoming his surprise, the young boy continued to creep forward, staying in the shadows—not like a creature of the tunnels, afraid of the light, but because the compacted earth was hot from the relentless sun. He continued to look ahead, like a seabird fixed on prey, as Qala bundled the struggling woman into her arms and held her there. The woman, whose features Vilu could not yet see, continued to kick and shout and then scream so loudly that the alleyways began to fill with more and more people drawn by her voice. People were beginning to wonder aloud who she was, for they did not know her; no one was a stranger in Falkhaan. He heard someone suggest that she was here for one of the local Night of Miracles celebrations.
Vilu crouched lower and continued forward until he was close enough to hear what the woman was saying. It was difficult to understand the precise meaning of the woman’s words, since her arms were flailing, unable to qualify what her mouth was speaking. But Vilu understood the gist of her anger:
“…must go!” the woman cried. “Must get back!”
“Where?” Qala asked. She hugged her close, the Standor’s legs wide to brace herself.
“My son… let me go!”
“First, you must calm yourself!” Qala ordered.
As the last of the shadows of the fishing fleet passed overhead, releasing the sun and causing the pool to sparkle wildly, the woman seemed to relax. She did not go limp but she ceased her struggles. Nonetheless, wily Lasha stood ready with a hemp noose he had just grabbed from the hut. He held it up, ready to slip it around the woman’s throat, but Qala shook her head.
“She will be all right now, I think,” the Standor said. It was as much an order as an observation. She tilted her head, looked down into the woman’s wide eyes. “You will be, yes?” she asked, motioning gently.
The woman didn’t answer but she stopped struggling. Vilu felt a release of tension from the crowd. It was like the Priests said: people could feel people’s moods if they were open to them. Now Vilu relaxed as well. Too late, he recalled why he had come running out in the first place. Shielding his gold eyes, he looked up at the great airship as it nosed up to the high mooring tower on the coast—his heart seemed to grow huge as he saw the pride of Falkhaan roped and planked to the simu-varkas, the highest column in western Galderkhaan. The great ship’s flipperlike wings rippled atop the envelope, catching the air, turning at the behest of the femora-sitas working the hemp. The tiny, distant deputy commanders were pulling hard. It was majestic, and yet—
Vilu’s eyes returned to the dying conflict there on the ground. That struggle had power too. Something about it touched him inside; not just fear as he had never known in his young life, but the unfamiliar wildness of the woman and whatever had been compelling her to strike Lasha, to cry out. He had seen people who inhaled dried, burning seaweed act strangely, dance, roll on the ground—but never violently.
The woman was tired and all but hanging limp in the Standor’s arms. The larger woman’s face was near her captive’s ear.
“Can I release?” Vilu heard the Standor ask in basic Galderkhaani, since her arms were still occupied.
Her captive hesitated then nodded.
“First, tell who are you and why this anger.”
The smaller woman was breathing heavily. She was looking ahead, scowling, as though she were trying to solve a problem posed by a numbers scholar. She seemed distracted and was moving her fingers as if they were weaving needles. Side to side, pointing down, tucking and untucking.
“Did you hear?” Standor Qala asked.
“Yes, yes,” the woman said. “I—I want to get home. To my son.”
“Where is home?”
“North,” she said after some hesitation.
“You must be mistaken,” Qala told her. “You cannot dwell ‘north.’ There is no town ‘north.’”
“There is,” the woman said, finding renewed life in her arms and gesturing emphatically. “I tried to tell that to this other one—”
“Noose her!” Lasha said, shaking the hemp with fearful enthusiasm.
“Quiet,” Qala said to the pool guardian. She turned her face back to her captive. “You wear the dress of a digger,” the Standor noted. “I will take you to the Technologists, perhaps they should be—”
“No!” the woman said, then laughed. She moved her pinned arms as much as she could. “My god, the Technologists. This is madness. I cannot be here. I don’t belong here. I must go back!”
Lasha had made his way around the woman then bent cautiously close to her hand. She was wearing a bracelet carved from stone.
“She cut my cheek with this,” he said as he studied it.
“Your cheek should not have been so close,” the captive said.
Qala continued to examine the woman. “No arguing. You seem better now,” she said.
“I can stand, if that’s what you mean.”
“And have a conversation,” the Standor said. She bent and looked at the carvings in the stone. “‘To Bayarma from Bayarmii,’” she read.