Beneath Ceaseless Skies #201

by Gwendolyn Clare

  They flew straight up to the Emperor’s palace, returning the airship with its valuable cargo and delivering the thieves in chains. The Emperor’s seneschal hung a medal of bravery around the boy’s neck, and the boy spent a whole afternoon with the royal magician, introducing the man to the djinn and talking about magic. Thanks to the boy’s actions, the lords and scholars and commanders of the Empire began to view the djinn with respect and esteem, and in return the djinn felt less inclined to make a nuisance of themselves.

  Surely, the boy thought, Father will be proud of me now.

  * * *

  Dorial blinked and looked up from the page, half-surprised to find himself still seated at a reading table in the library, instead of adventuring through far-away skies in the company of mythical spirits. He ought to be angry with himself for succumbing to distraction; instead, he could not shake the feeling that the story served a purpose beyond merely delaying his pursuit, that some hidden meaning lay within. What sort of game was Navidha playing with him?

  If the story was intended as a clue, Dorial saw three possible hints: the mother’s instruments, the father’s airships, and the boy’s gemstone. Cloud City hosted three civilian docking structures, each visited by dozens of airships every week—slim chance that anyone working the docks would remember a lone girl, even a lady. The other two destinations, though, could be checked and eliminated with relative ease.

  Dorial left the library and flew first to the luthier’s shop on the edge of the main island. Scourge snorted dismissively, catching none of Navidha’s scent, and when Dorial went inside to inquire, the luthier said he’d seen no one who fit the description. Next Dorial flew to the gemstone dealer in the district where the wealthiest merchants lived, and he asked the dealer the same questions, to no avail.

  Dorial let Scourge take to the sky while he considered the problem. The wind in his face helped clear the cobwebs from his thoughts. If she already owned a gemstone, where would she go? What were gemstones used for, when they weren’t embedded in the foreheads of imaginary boys? Worth a try, he thought, and steered Scourge toward the city’s smiths and jewelers.

  Outside the silversmith’s studio Scourge perked up, flaring his nostrils, and Dorial’s pulse leapt with anticipation. Still, he approached the shop entrance with caution, palms resting on the pommels of his willow-leaf blades. Why did the girl want him following her? If this was a trap, then whatever mercenaries she’d hired were in for a nasty surprise. Dorial did not wear his blades for show.

  Dorial reached for the door and found it locked, the storefront apparently closed at the moment. So he followed the muffled clanging of smithwork around the back to an open-air workshop. There was a small but blazing-hot forge, a roof for shade, and yellow lacquer panels that could be slid closed to form walls, but at the moment the middle-aged silversmith worked with the sunlight streaming in from the west.

  “Hello?” Dorial called politely. This did not look like an opportune location to set a trap. “Excuse the interruption.”

  The smith glanced up and waved a hand to usher Dorial inside before returning his attention to the workbench. Despite his age the smith was clean-shaven, and his right arm was noticeably stronger than his left, the muscles bulky from years of working at his craft. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m looking for someone,” Dorial said. The heat from the forge pricked sweat from the back of his neck. Dorial dressed as his squadron mates did, in rough-hewn trousers and shirt beneath a vest and thigh plates of hardened-leather armor, with a cap and gloves and a jacket on top of it all. The gentle breeze through the open walls might have helped the smith, but it did nothing to keep Dorial cool.

  The smith looked Dorial in the eye when he spoke. “Someone in particular, I take it.”

  Dorial frowned slightly. Was that amusement crinkling at the corners of the smith’s eyes? What exactly was going on here? He cleared his throat. “A young lady, high-born, unaccompanied. I believe she came here yesterday or the day before.”

  Yes, that was amusement all right—a knowing grin blossomed across the smith’s face. “Of course, of course. She said you’d be along to pick it up.”

  Dorial blinked. “Pick what up?”

  “Her commission, of course.” He was still smiling, as if he’d expected Dorial’s confusion.

  “That’s not why I—” Dorial began, but the smith was already wiping his hands on his leather apron and heading toward a door that must have served as the rear entrance of the shop.

  “Wait here,” he said before disappearing inside.

  Dorial shifted his weight from foot to foot and scanned his surroundings, disquieted by this turn of events. He did not appreciate the feeling of being toyed with.

  When the smith returned, he carried a piece of finished silverwork, and Dorial wondered if this were all an elaborate joke. But the smith held it out as if waiting for Dorial to inspect and approve the piece. It was a diadem composed of an elegant swirl of silverwork with a blood-red cabochon in the center.

  “It looks... nice?” Dorial said, at a loss.

  The smith huffed at the weak praise but carefully folded the diadem in a protective cloth before handing it over. “She left this for you, as well,” he said and produced a leather envelope of the type used by couriers to transport important documents.

  Dorial tucked the diadem into the inside pocket of his jacket before accepting the envelope. He eyed the smith, wondering exactly how much the man knew and whether he should leave before reading the contents. But the smith turned his attention back to the work table and the half-finished project thereupon.

  So Dorial opened the envelope and pulled out the top sheet of paper, on which Navidha had written a second letter.

  My dearest pursuer,

  I’m afraid I must further delay the completion of your mission, as I still have some tasks left to accomplish before I may return to my uncle’s palace. I have asked the silversmith to present you with my commission, hoping you will see fit to deliver it to me. I am sure such a task is beneath your talents, though I promise it will serve to hasten our meeting.

  I deeply regret any frustration I have caused you, necessary though it may be, and I look forward to knowing you soon. To pass the time, please see the enclosed.

  Yours,

  Navidha

  Dorial hesitated, the rest of the pages still tucked away in the envelope unseen. If he left now without taking the time to read the story, he might catch Navidha at her next destination. But what if she had hidden another clue in this narrative? Dorial decided he must read on in order to complete his mission.

  * * *

  The boy with the magic gemstone in his brow went on many adventures with his comrades the djinn, and he became well acquainted with each of them. One day he noticed a few of the djinn were missing, and so he asked where they had gone. The djinn told him a story.

  Long ago there was a powerful djinn who viewed humanity with scorn and stole whatever she liked from them. And long ago there was also a powerful sorceress who spent her waning years cultivating a garden of rare magical plants, in which grew a black pomegranate tree. The powerful djinn desired a taste of those magical black pomegranates, and so she snuck into the garden at night and plucked a basketful of ripe fruit from the tree. But the powerful sorceress caught her in the act, and so she trapped the djinn inside an oil lamp and cursed her to serve the desires of men. And this is what the powerful djinn has done ever since.

  What a sad story, the boy said to the djinn. But where are our missing friends?

  The lord that holds the oil lamp wished for more servants, the djinn told him, and so our friends have been enslaved.

  The boy declared, We must go and rescue them!

  As they flew to the far away island where the lord lived, the boy plotted and schemed and strategized ways to free his friends. But when he arrived at the opulent mansion and approached the lord, he found the man in a state of distress.

  These djinn make disast
rous servants, the lord told the boy. When they carry a pitcher of milk, it sours. When they carry a platter of fruit, it goes rotten. They set fire to the linens and blow out the lamp flames. They misplace my wife’s jewelry and bring her live mice instead. And you’d think invisible servants would be wonderful, but I never know where they are! If I had any wishes left, I’d wish them all gone!

  The boy hid a smile. He was not in the least surprised to hear this report of his friends’ abilities as servants. But he put on a serious face and offered to solve the lord’s problems. All the lord had to do was give the boy the oil lamp.

  The lord, who had used up all his wishes anyway, eagerly agreed.

  The boy lit the oil lamp and called forth the powerful old djinn. She towered over the others, and there was a glint of hatred in her eyes. The boy wondered how many men would dare make wishes if she were visible to them, with that thirst for revenge written on her face.

  I will grant you three wishes, the powerful djinn said.

  When he considered what he might wish for, the boy found he was content with his life and wanted for nothing. This, indeed, was the fulfillment of all he could remember wanting: to fly with the djinn to distant islands and have great adventures and do heroic deeds.

  So the boy spent only one of his wishes, and with it he wished for all the trapped djinn to be free. The once-trapped powerful djinn was touched by his kindness, and she abandoned her vendetta against mankind to instead go adventuring with the boy. Together they flew many skies and explored distant islands and sought heroic deeds in need of doing. And they were content—even if the boy’s parents were not.

  * * *

  Dorial tucked the pages away in the courier’s envelope and walked back to where Scourge waited for him, considering the problem of where to search next.

  His first thought was the oil lamp, but the story did not specify whether the lamp was ceramic or bronze; did he need to find another smith, or a potter? The diadem would let Navidha wear a stone on her brow, like the boy in the story, but why would a young lady need to purchase an oil lamp? There must have been hundreds of lamps available for her use in the palace.

  Then Dorial remembered the old sorceress with her garden of magical plants. Cloud City had no sorceresses, of course—sorcery was the province of folktales and embellished histories—but there were herbalists and apothecaries. A rare plant would be something Navidha could not acquire within the walls of her uncle’s palace.

  Scourge launched into the air once more. Dorial increased pressure on the curb bit, guiding the pterather to descend toward the lower islands of the city. Scourge dove through a layer of stratus, cold moisture clinging to the pterather’s plumage in tiny droplets like a dusting of crushed glass. From below, the clouds were lit up with sunset colors, liquid gold and melon pink across the deep darkening blue of the sky.

  The lower islands of Cloud City were poorer, meaner, but also more jovial and lively. The people had less but shared more. An air of authority tended to make them nervous, though, and the lower city reminded Dorial uncomfortably of the island where he grew up. Of a childhood spent desperately trying to be a person he could never be, a person who did not fit in his own skin.

  Dorial and Scourge worked their way down from one apothecary to the next, Dorial asking questions and Scourge sniffing the air. When Scourge finally perked up, catching a scent, they landed in the center of a floating market square ringed with stalls and shops. The evening market bustled, and Dorial half-wondered if the pterather had followed the smell of lemon-soaked lamb kebabs and cardamom flatbread instead of hunting for Navidha. But Scourge swung his large head in the direction of an herbalist’s shop.

  Once inside, the voices of the marketplace were reduced to a gentle murmur. The failing daylight left the shop cluttered with shadows, the glow of a hearth fire not enough to illuminate the far corners of the room. An old woman bent over the hearth, checking the progress of some decoction in a small cast-iron pot. She took her time stirring, leaving Dorial to wait awkwardly by the door. Dorial cleared his throat.

  “You’re late,” the herbalist said without looking up.

  “Excuse me?”

  She straightened, one hand on her stiff lower back. “She told me you’d be coming. Now where did I put it...” The herbalist shuffled past a long work table that doubled as a sales counter and rummaged around in the back of the shop.

  Dorial stepped up to the counter. “One of your patrons left a letter for me? A young lady, highborn and unaccompanied?”

  “Ah, here it is,” the old woman said, lifting a sheet of paper triumphantly. She passed it to him.

  There was no letter this time, only a single page written in Navidha’s neat, compact, now-familiar handwriting. Dorial glanced at the herbalist, puzzled, then bent his head to read.

  * * *

  As the boy grew older, his mother and father grew concerned. It was one thing for a child to spend his days adventuring with the djinn, but it was another matter entirely for a young man to do so. Young men were meant to be mastering a craft, or learning their figures, or practicing swordplay. Magic was for children. So the mother and father sat the boy down to have a serious discussion about his future.

  We must cut out your gemstone, said the boy’s father.

  I do not want to cut out the gemstone, said the boy. I love the magic—it is who I am.

  But if we do not, you will never grow up and become a man, said the boy’s mother.

  The boy said, Then I will stay a boy forever.

  On the night before the boy’s fourteenth birthday, his parents hired the monks from the local temple to visit their home. The monks tied the boy to his bed and cut out the magic stone with a heated iron knife.

  The next day the old powerful djinn arrived to celebrate the boy’s birthday, only to find him blind to her. Infuriated at the loss of her truest friend, she crept into the boy’s house that night and murdered his parents in their sleep.

  The boy grew up, became a man, and inherited his father’s business, which languished and failed under his direction. By middle age, he had sold off all seven airships of his father’s fleet and spent the last of his coin on wine and whores, and he died of cholera in a charity house on the outskirts of nowhere.

  He never saw another djinn.

  The end.

  * * *

  Dorial stared, dumbstruck, at the paper in his hands. He flipped the page over, but the back side was blank. That was all there was.

  “Did you like my story?”

  Dorial glanced up, startled, to find a young lady standing in the doorway. She had crow-black curls and wide cheekbones above a pointed chin. She smiled, and the look she gave him was full of anticipation and hope. Dorial, with his habit of expecting the worst, could not fathom why.

  He cleared his throat. “Rather a grim ending, I’d say.”

  “It doesn’t have to be,” Navidha said softly, sadly.

  Dorial shifted his weight, uncomfortable with this strange lady and her unfathomable moods. Were all royals like this? He did not know what to say to her.

  Quick as a whip, she stepped closer and offered him her hand. “Forgive me, we have not been properly introduced. I’m called Navidha.”

  He took her hand and inclined his head. “Dorial, rider of Scourge, ensign aboard the airship Emergence.”

  “Well, not at the moment,” she corrected.

  Dorial dropped her hand. “Excuse me?”

  Navidha looked around, pretending to survey their surroundings. “Last I checked, we’re not aboard an airship.”

  “The Emergence is my current posting,” he said stiffly. “And it is past time I returned you to the palace, so I may resume it.”

  “We could...” she said, drawing the word out playfully. “But if we go now, I’ll have to be vexed with you, and I shan’t be inclined to tell you what I’ve been doing all this time.”

  “What makes you think I’m curious to know?” Dorial countered, though of course he w
as. He couldn’t help but feel invested in the mystery.

  “You have a curious soul. An incurious man would not have read my stories, and not have seen my clues, and not have found me.”

  She was looking straight at him with her wide anise-black eyes, seeing him for what he was, and she had called him a man anyway. Where Dorial expected insult, he found only acknowledgment. And that mattered. “Very well. I can allow you some time, so long as you accept me as an escort.”

  Navidha wandered away from him, idly touching a display of dried herbs as if collecting her thoughts. “Tell me, Ensign Dorial, what do you know of aether? What is it, exactly?”

  “Aether is... an element, like water or metal or wood.”

  “Rain falls. If you throw a stone up, it always comes back down. Even air sinks, thicker near the sea and thinner above the clouds,” she said. “But not aether. Of all the elements, only aether rises. The inexplicable nature of aether proves the existence of magic.”

  Dorial frowned at her logic. He’d had schooling enough to read and write, to do sums, and even to navigate by the stars. But he was no scholar of alchemy—what did he know of elements?

  “There was magic in the world once,” Navidha continued. “All the stories tell us this. I want to discover it again, for the glory of our kingdom.”

  Dorial laughed. “Djinn and gemstones?”

  “Perhaps. Perhaps not,” she said, perfectly serious.

  He folded his arms. “What, then?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to find out?” she said. “I know I would.”

  Dorial had expected the king’s niece to be a frivolous young lady, the sort to run away in pursuit of some romantic infatuation, or perhaps simply to cause a stir or attract attention. He did not know what to do with the girl he’d found instead, who devoted her passion to something larger than herself.