The Ordinary

by Jim Grimsley

  Vitter found them near a trellis heavy with a fragrant purple-flowering vine. He was still carrying his stat in his belt, even though it wasn’t working, and on occasion he lay his fingers on the input grip, out of habit, though without Tarma’s aura of strain. Jedda realized she felt perfectly natural without hers, though she felt uncomfortable after the thought. Vitter said his hello somewhat awkwardly. Himmer and he were acquaintances, and that in itself was surprising. Jedda guessed Vitter to be middle-aged, at least a hundred years old if not more, and he had an odd face, a bulbous nose and very thin lips, a throwback feature. The Hormling were the blend of many races of people who had come to Senal a long time ago, and by the time they arrived their blood had already mixed during their long voyage, so that most people were the same color, creamy brown, and most people had similar features, including a slight almond cast to the eyes, though now and then someone was born with one of the traits of the progenitors, like these horribly thin lips of Vitter’s. It was past thinking he had done this to himself deliberately. Had anyone ever wanted to kiss him?

  He had come for conversation but began hesitantly. “I found myself wondering, this morning,” he said, and cleared his throat, “wondering why we’re being such very bad guests.”

  “You think our hosts have noticed?” Himmer asked.

  “Oh, yes.” Vitter looked at him directly. Once again Jedda found herself nearly a bystander, but she listened. Vitter said, “We know a good deal about the Erejhen. We know they’re very touchy about their privacy.”

  “But Tarma’s only upset because these people knew we were coming, they should have been prepared.”

  “But they never asked us here, you see,” Vitter explained, and his voice was so mild Jedda found herself drawn to him. “We told them we planned to come, and when they never responded, we told them again that we planned to come and gave them a date.”

  “That’s our way of doing things. I thought this Malin had agreed to meet with Tarma.”

  “Malin’s message was that at the moment she was in Montajhena, but that we would certainly find her at home in one of her homes. We aren’t completely sure what the phrase means, in the language here.”

  Jedda had laughed, hearing the phrase as if spoken in Erejhen. “I’ve never heard the exact formula, but it sounds like a polite way of saying, you may or may not find me.”

  “But we decided to send delegates anyway, because we thought Malin would be in Montajhena through the season. That was what we were led to believe by her people. By the time we got here, she was gone again.”

  Himmer seemed truly puzzled, now. “But they’re telling us she expects us, that she’s on the way back to the city.”

  Vitter explained very patiently, and Jedda guessed he had been a teacher once. “That may be true. And it may not be true. These people will go on saying it, regardless. We’ve tried to explain this to the Orminy, to Tarma. My section of my ministry has been studying these people, we know some of what they like and don’t like. We know they don’t like direct questions, but if you ask one, they will give you some kind of answer, and you’ll have to make of it what you want.”

  “Like when they answered us about walking around the city,” Jedda said.

  “Yes. That’s their way. They don’t grant permission.”

  “They don’t refuse, either,” Jedda added.

  “No, it’s very bad form to refuse anything directly.”

  “So Tarma is being rude, at the least,” Himmer said. “We all are. Sitting here expecting something.”

  Vitter was looking around at the building that housed the party, standing alone with a wall surrounding it, gardens on all sides, open to the air. The facade of gray and lavender stone, a beautiful harmony of detail, the slight curve of the roof line, the gracefully carved entablatures beneath the windows. “These are a beautiful people,” he said. “They have a life we should not disturb.”

  “We’ve only come to ask them if we can explore farther north,” Himmer said. “To open relations with them to a fuller degree. Now that we know who the rulers are, we want to be speaking to them.”

  “You know that’s not true,” Vitter replied. “We’ve already asked to explore farther north, and we’ve already been told no. More than once. When we first learned there was a people called the Erejhen north of the bay, we asked the Anin to introduce them to us, and they refused. We asked the first Erejhen who would talk to us to introduce us to someone who could give us permission to travel north of the bay, and they all said the same thing, and have been saying the same thing all along. The Erejhen don’t want us exploring here. They don’t really want us trading here at all, in Irion, but they’re willing to permit it, to please the Anin, to whom they feel they owe some kind of debt. But they certainly don’t want more of us coming, and they won’t welcome us.”

  “That seems so unfriendly. What harm can we do, just by taking a look at the place?”

  The three of them looked at each other. Vitter started to speak, then shook his head. Wrapping his arms around his middle against the chilly air, he hurried inside again. He looked a bit lost, a Hormling walking in the open garden and no one else with him in the frame, stoop-shouldered, as if he should have been turning the corner in a narrow corrider, sliding past someone else on the second tier, where Jedda lived.

  3

  That afternoon Jedda, Himmer, and Vitter donned the coats they had brought with them. A coat was an unfamiliar garment to Himmer, who had never visited Irion before and who grumbled about the cold, the bulk of his clothes, and on and on. Jedda tuned him out. She had bought a good coat in Charnos years before, Erejhen wool, very light, woven with another fiber that made it even warmer, and lined with sturdy fleece. It had flapped fastenings and a hood that tucked neatly away. A coat for a trek in the high mountains, the Anin merchant had told her, the kind of coat the Erejhen hunters wore when they were going on a long journey. Vitter had a similar garment, the same texture, and they smiled at one another.

  “These people could teach us a thing or two about textiles,” Vitter said.

  The three of them had decided to test the Krii’s statement, to find out whether anyone would stop them if they went for a walk. Heading down the stone stairs, which descended in a long graceful curve, and passing down the main corridor to the forecourt where an artificial waterfall was bathing stones beneath a cluster of ferns, they headed out the door. One of the household staff in outdoor clothing stepped along behind them. “You are leaving to walk in the city?” she asked, in Erejhen.

  “Yes. We’d like to.”

  “Then I would come with you.”

  “We would be glad of the company,” Jedda said, “but you don’t need to trouble yourself.”

  “I should go where you go,” she said, simply. “Are you expecting others?”

  “No.” Jedda gestured. “It’s possible some of the others will want to walk in the city, too, but they won’t be with us. What’s your name?”

  “Kartayn.”

  Apparently Vitter understood some of the language, because he smiled. “That’s a very common name,” he said to Jedda, in Alenke, with a twinkle in his eye, and Jedda wasn’t sure whether he was joking or not.

  “Kartayn, do you know if anyone has a map of the city?” Jedda asked.

  “No,” she said, “but I can take you where you like. Do you want to see the towers?”

  In the light one saw her beauty, this so-called Kartayn. Opit had warned Jedda, one or another of them would steal her heart.

  At first the city simply seemed chaotic and windswept. The streets clung to the mountain, tracing a trail back and forth across the face of the rock on as easy a grade as possible. Alley-stairways ran the vertical route, up and down the mountain, connecting the crossing tiers of the street. Since most of the buildings were built of the same kind of stone, the result was a confusion of similar intersections, the same street crossing the same alleys over and over, a maze that made no sense to anyone except the guide. S
he marched them confidently up stone stairways and along cobbled sidewalks, through an open market and across the lower causeway, a sweeping bridge that leapt in arches over jagged mountain rock, dizzying to look at. A shortcut to the other arm of the mountain appeared to be laid out in an equally confusing manner. The streets were busy, but there was room for pedestrians to walk along one side of the wagon road.

  The guide led them toward the slender towers, visible from everywhere, silhouetted against the white snow that blanketed the mountain behind. Kartayn stopped to let them catch their breath at a place where the causeway widened, where they could look down the gulf of empty air to the cascade of the city along the part of the mountain beneath, the causeway struts descending in amazing curves. The height brought a flutter to Jedda’s stomach, and Himmer had turned away, his skin colorless and clammy. The guide was looking at him curiously, and Jedda smiled and said, “Where we come from, you can’t see so far.”

  The remark puzzled Kartayn but she was too proud to show any curiosity.

  “Who built this?” Jedda asked, indicating the city, the causeway. “The Erejhen must be great builders to make a road like this. To make a city on a mountain.”

  Kartayn gave a scornful laugh. Her skin was the color of cream, her lips dark and full. “The Erejhen didn’t build this place,” she said. “The Smiths built the houses in the open air and the Orloc built the ones in the mountain. In the lower city, these days, the Anin build for us. No one would let the Erejhen build, why would we want to?”

  “Who are these other people, I haven’t heard of them? The Smiths. The Orloc.”

  “They are peoples we know,” she said, and blinked in that calm way.

  Himmer’s stomach had settled enough so they could continue the walk. Without the stat he had nothing to keep the nausea away, so they kept the pace slow and their eyes on him. Kartayn had her eye on him, too, and when they passed a market, she got him a ladle of tea from one of the vendors. She loaned him the cup she carried on her belt, though Jedda could see she hesitated. He drank the tea and they walked. After a while he looked less green.

  “Flatland people get mountain sickness here,” she explained to Jedda, “because of the height. We make the tea for it.”

  By now they stood close enough to see the walkways around the bases, the towers rising sheer and tapered, sides as smooth as glass, one a dark gray stone, partly black, glistening, the other a mix of pale colors, opalescent.

  “My God,” Himmer looking up, craning his neck. “Ask her who built these.”

  Jedda asked, then translated. “Their names are Gerest and Werust,” she said, and the guide smiled at her pronunciation. “They were built with the help of a people she calls the Smiths, and some other word I can’t get.” Though in fact she had understood the word quite well.

  “A wizard,” Vitter said.

  She tried to show no surprise. “That’s the word. The Anin say that’s the title these Erejhen give to their holy people. How did you know? Do you speak Erejhen?”

  “No. But I do know some of the stories these people tell about their history.” He smiled blandly, his thin, tufted hair blowing in the wind. His eyes were sharp and aware, and the way he looked at the city made Jedda shiver, as if he were an ungainly creature of prey.

  For a while they watched the towers, saying nothing, wind sweeping the flank of the mountain. Causeways connected the towers to the rest of the city, but the wooden gates that led to the causeways were closed.

  “Can we go inside?” Jedda asked.

  The guide laughed and shook her head. After a moment she blushed. “I don’t mean to be unkind, but the question is funny to us, it would have to be.”

  “Why?”

  “I would never want to go inside one of the towers,” she said. “I’m afraid of them.”

  “Of the wizards?”

  She simply looked at Jedda, and the hand closed over her face. Where before Jedda had guessed her to be young, now she appeared older, as her face grew stern. “Of whatever is there,” she said. “You should be, too.”

  “Was Irion one of the wizards who built these?” Jedda asked.

  “He was the one who brought them back,” she answered, and something about the conversation had upset her; that was all she would say.

  She led them back another way, along the upper causeway in the district where the rich Erejhen lived, the place where their government and some of their temples were located. Vitter asked Jedda to find out whether they could see inside a temple, and Kartayn, when she was asked, simply shrugged. She took them inside a stone shrine, very simple and plain, the only adornment being a lamp on a stand with something carved on the wall over it. Jedda asked what happened in the temple. “We light the lamp at night,” the guide answered, “and we put it out in the morning.”

  “They worship a form of the mother goddess,” Vitter told Jedda quietly, in Alenke, while they were walking behind the guide. “We learned that much from the Anin, who have some of the same beliefs. She has no name, she’s represented by a sign. You would have seen it over the altar if you had known where to look.”

  “The altar?”

  “The thing the lamp was sitting on.”

  “I thought it was a table.”

  He gave her a look that felt condescending. Himmer had been listening but glanced ahead to make sure the guide was still in sight. Himmer looked comfortable and round and when he glanced back at her, he blushed a bit. “It’s an altar,” Vitter said. “The lamp-lighting is very holy to them. They claim they’ve had the same practice since the beginning of their history. Which goes back tens of thousands of years, even older than us, if what the Anin scholars tell us is true.”

  He was a little out of breath on the slopes and leaned on her, his sharp fingers pinching her arm as he grasped for support. She found herself struggling to like him.

  But now they were back at their own building, as daylight was fading. “Better to be inside at night,” the guide explained, as they were entering the gate to the forecourt. “We all think so.”

  She bowed and left and some of the other staff helped them with their coats and offered them a warm cup of something that tasted fairly bitter, like coffee. Jaka, it was called. With a sweet cake that eased the feeling of hunger in Jedda’s gut.

  They arrived upstairs and Jedda laid down to rest. But a few moments later, after the staff had already come in to light the lamps in her room, there was another knock on the door. Melda, looking a bit panic stricken. “Tarma wants us. There’s some kind of crisis with that fellow who came this morning.”

  “The Krii.” Jedda threw on her jacket and grabbed the stat, out of habit, before she remembered. She snapped it to her belt anyway.

  The Krii was in the lobby with another Hormling party of three at his side, the trio looking very chagrined. Jedda was surprised to see more Hormling and even more surprised by their clothing. They were from Enforcement, two men and a woman, big-bodied in their clothes, one of them beribboned in a way that indicated he was a combat veteran. Jedda gathered, as the conversation was already in progress, that they had come looking for Tarma in an aircraft when the link to her stat was broken.

  “But you have promised us these things,” the Krii was explaining, in Alenke, “that you would not send any of these war machines to our country.”

  “I’m very embarrassed,” Tarma was saying, “these people were only concerned for my safety.”

  “You were not in any danger.”

  “But we are used to being able to reach one another, through use of these,” Tarma lifted her stat. She had gone through this before, her body language was weakening. “When my people could not reach me they became afraid something had happened to me. I’m terribly sorry.”

  The Krii turned to the new Hormling, then back to Tarma. “Our agreement was for seven, not for ten. These will go back where they came from.”

  “They’ll fly their machine off your land as soon as you release them,” Tarma agreed, but
the Krii was already shaking his head.

  “The machine will not fly,” he said.

  “Of course it will,” Tarma asserted, and then she understood.

  “They will go to Karsk by wagon,” the Krii said. “When it can be arranged. We will keep them with us until then.”

  “No,” Tarma said, “you can leave them with me, in my custody, until you’ve arranged for their transportation south.”

  “We’ll keep them with us till they go,” the Krii repeated. “They will be quite comfortable,” and he withdrew with the three captives and his retinue.

  The delegates were alone after that, and everyone retired to Tarma’s room, where she sat stone-faced in a chair and refused to permit any of them to leave her presence. Her skin had become almost gray in the light. A ring on her hand held a red stone, probably a ruby, in a heavy gold setting. After a very long time, she said, “I suppose this could be considered an act of war.”

  She meant the detaining of the three Hormling, of course, and not the entry of a military aircraft into this peaceful country. Her remark dropped into complete silence. No one dared say a word.

  Kurn had turned her back on Tarma, so she spoke to the woman directly. “Kurn, don’t you agree? They’ve brought down one of our warplanes. What can you call that but an act of aggression?”

  “They brought it down?” Himmer asked.

  Tarma flushed darkly and glared at him. “You were late, you didn’t hear that part, did you, Himmer? Yes. These people brought the plane down last night sometime, south of here. And that’s not even the best part. The third crewman was a fully enhanced infantry veteran with deployable microweaponry and defenses, which also failed.” She was glaring at Tuk An. “Our hosts had the crew carried here riding on those animals.”

  “A warplane?” Vitter asked, his face sour. In his upset he had forgotten any gestures of deference toward Tarma. “The Ministries sent a warplane? To find out why we’d fallen out of touch?”