“You know very well that I’m not,” Zell said. “He is well trained and perfectly suited to handle this run.”
Qala grinned.
Zell continued to gaze at Qala. “You realize what this means?”
“I do,” Qala said. “And that’s all right. Children are more of a nuisance than thyodularasi. But this boy has something.”
“Something you recognize. And are prepared to nurture. Because you cannot give him back. That would crush him.”
“I understand, and I am not just doing this for the boy but for the future of the fleet.”
“There is no truth in what you just said,” Zell remarked. “None.”
“I am not interested in bearing or parenting,” Qala insisted.
“Yet if he doesn’t recover his wits, you may find him your responsibility regardless,” Zell pointed out.
“I know,” Qala replied. “But we get ahead of ourselves. First, you must heal him so we know if we have Vilu, or whatever he called himself.”
“Jay-cupo-oh-ha-rayaah,” Zell said. “Which is another puzzle. To suffer from mental illness, yet have such a precise, repeatable name… the two of them.” The physician gripped the rail as the airship lurched from its moorings. “Which is what we came out here to discuss, before philosophy got in the way—again,” Zell told her. “I do not want to use herbs to try and shock away whatever illness has come over Vilu.”
“Why?”
“The presence—whatever it is, whether real or imagined—must not be subjugated, it must be removed.”
“All right. Why?”
“Because you said yourself, a foreign soul was present in Bayarma, even though the normal Galderkhaani woman is ‘here’ now. She could seem normal for a time and then that other personality may return. In both of them it must be found, isolated, and removed.”
“How?” Qala asked.
Zell leaned on the chest-high railing and looked out at the city. In the distance, they heard the plank stowed on the deck, the ropes around and below the bag groaning as the inflated envelope bore the entire weight of the gondola.
“I’ll tell you in a moment,” Zell said. “I want to make sure I understand—you did nothing to the woman to cause Bayarma to revert from or to her present state?”
“Nothing,” Qala assured him. “We were talking and it suddenly happened after we walked on a Path of Ancestors,” she said, glancing in the direction of the roadway. “Perhaps that had some effect?”
“Old bones and sinew? I doubt it, unless the ascended souls were still present, which I also doubt.” He shook his head. “I’ve walked that road many times and never felt anything there.”
“We don’t have to explore that now,” Qala said. “It affects those who wish to be affected.”
“Who imagine too much,” Zell said. “But yes, for another time. Right now, we have two, possibly four, lost and conflated beings.”
Both felt the sudden, gentle shift aloft and toward the stern as the airship fully surrendered itself to the sky and its winds. The gondola rocked gently from side to side as the ropes that held it to the bag settled with taut familiarity that was controlled by the personnel of the wing commander. There was a familiar rustling sound as the proud wings unfurled to catch the wind. Qala had not experienced departure from the side of the carriage since she was a young usa-femora. Typically she was in the forward cabin. Watching the landscape shift sideways, instead of flying into it, made her smile. As soon as the flight settled, she would go aft to look down into the tower.
“You were saying, Zell?” Qala said.
“Eh?”
“About the boy,” Qala coaxed. “What will you try to reach this other—person?”
“I want to attempt nuat, Standor.”
Disapproval clouded Qala’s open features. “Even the Technologists disapprove of that and they invented it.”
“Discovered,” Zell gently corrected his superior.
“The distinction won’t matter to one whose mind… melts!”
“The result of over-exuberance, not careful application.”
“No, Zell. Not the boy.”
“It can be moderated,” Zell insisted.
“The stones cannot be controlled outside a ring, you know that,” Qala replied. “They seek, they reach out with… with fists, not fingers. And if one is in the way—”
“That is Priestly fear-mongering,” Zell said dismissively. “If properly applied, it is said it can chase bad humors from any mind.”
“You’ve done it?”
“No.”
“Then that is my answer.”
“I see,” Zell said. “Is it more dangerous than having someone else’s spirit inhabit your body?”
“I don’t know,” Qala admitted. “It’s possible we all do, I suppose.”
“Yes, of course. You’re referring to that woman Ula who had her own small airship and flew from town to town displaying the seven or eight voices in her head?” Zell shook his head angrily. “I saw her when I was a boy. It was an act.”
“Others say it was not.”
“They’re wrong,” Zell said.
“Even so, ‘One charlatan does not a theory discredit,’” Qala said.
“That must be one of Vol’s sayings. He’s a poet, a naysayer for anything that has actual evidence to support it. He conveniently moves on whenever anyone proves him to be a fabulist.”
“‘The Priests dream,’” Qala mused. “And it’s not just Vol’s idea, that a form of cazh can link living and ascended. Perhaps certain stimuli are the triggers.” She cocked her head toward the physician’s cabin. “I say again, those two were in the same courtyard. I can’t shake the feeling that something there might have done it. Lasha blamed it on bad fish.”
“That’s stupid.”
“I agree, but there could be some other medium. They may have interacted with the same thyodularasi who actually pulled me to where the boy had fallen.”
“So its mind merged with theirs?” Zell said mockingly.
“I don’t know. It may have brought something from the sea, a new scent, something that confused their minds,” Qala said.
“Indeed it could have,” Zell said. “The sea is always throwing out surprises. But—and I’m sorry to repeat myself—”
“No, you’re not sorry. You like hearing yourself speak.”
“I am orating,” Zell insisted with a knowing smirk. “But the only way to learn more is from the only material we have at hand. That means our two subjects.”
Qala exhaled slowly. She looked out at Galderkhaan. The vista was both shrinking and expanding: the smaller Falkhaan became, the greater their view of the surrounding lands. There were icy foothills and then the distant peaks of Qala’s native valley. One could no longer make out the features of the people but the underbellies of the clouds became more detailed, their movements subtler, swifter in their detail. Qala saw the shadow of her vessel shifting and diminishing over the landscape the higher they went.
“I’m going to have to think about this while I have a look at the tower,” Qala said. “Until I do, my answer stands. Give me other options.”
“Well, I can use my compounds to try and communicate with these beings, but language might be an impediment if, as we’ve seen, the other souls do not speak Galderkhaani. But, Standor, I don’t know what risks we face there either. If the boy goes away again, he may not return. That is why I return to the more radical—”
“No.”
“Qala, unlike the route we fly, the route we take with those two is uncharted—”