“Tsulygoi?”
I looked behind me. Yisaraq, the last of aJia’jara’s wives who still remained with me, was there. She was an older dwenda, though that only meant she was about my age, in contrast to all the others, who were at most a few talons past the Taitalan age of majority, which was ten. Even so, she was still very hot in the same way supermodels who stayed relevant into their thirties and forties had. She was often up here, tending to the flowers and plants.
“How are you doing?” I asked.
“I am uninjured.”
There was another emotion in her eyes, as if I couldn’t sense it from her anyway: You promised to mate with me, and you still have not.
I had most certainly promised her, and I’d been putting it off because of the pressure to keep the clans happy. But it was time.
I walked up to her, looking down into her lavender eyes. I brushed her glimmering silver hair back from her face and took her chin in my hands.
“I have some things I need to do tonight. But come to my office later. You will have what you desire.”
There was a short, but sharp, intake of breath.
“Yes, Yisaraq. Tonight. I have put you off too long.”
She looked down.
“Yes, my tsulygoi.”
◆◆◆
I ate dinner with my five wives, during which there was a lot of discussion of the bombings but little in the way of conclusions. We also discussed my meeting with Varycibe and my intent to start admitting a few girls from the crowd outside. The five of them were unanimous in feeling that I would be setting in motion something that could easily spin out of control, but they promised to do what they could to make it work. I mentioned Yisaraq. They agreed to leave me alone tonight.
Then I retired to my office. I had reading to do.
When I took over aJia’jara’s house, in his safe I found the diary of the last makalang, his grandfather. Silas Jeroboam Johnson was a ship captain and privateer from colonial Boston who arrived in Taitala much the same way I had, through a strange cave studded with crystals. He came here in 1781, gathered a lot of wives, and disappeared. But he left behind five handwritten journals summarizing his experiences.
I was taking my time studying his journals, because it was clear fairly quickly that he left this record for whoever came after him – namely, me. I wasn’t reading them for the entertainment value, though. I needed to know if there was a way to get back to Earth. I had left a life behind there, along with my son and daughter. Whatever I did on Taitala, I had to eventually return home for them, if I could – even though I didn’t really know how long my journey here had taken, if it had been a blink of an eye, or a million years at light speed to another galaxy. So if Silas had found any clues in that respect, I needed to know them too.
Like the ship captain he’d been, Silas kept meticulous records of everywhere he went and everything he’d done. So I forced myself to pay attention to the details. Early on, he listed everything he’d brought with him through the cave on what was supposed to be a trip back out to sea: his clothes, the journals, his navigational instruments, a chest of Spanish silver for various expenses, and so on.
The Taitala of his time was not the world I was currently living in. He made no mention of maglev trains or crystal tablets or shimmering crystal plates that served as money. Obviously, those things had been invented well after he’d written his account. Phan-garad existed, but I was intrigued to read that it sounded like a larger city than it was now. He came here as I had, seeking answers for what he was.
Phan-garad is a city of wonders that rivals New York in size, and in appearance puts my home of Boston to considerable shame, with its towers of glittering crystal that catch the eye in a most pleasing manner as far as the eye can see, and many gardens of meticulous design speaking to decades of careful husbandry. As much as I miss the familiar demesnes of my birth, Phan-garad beckons to me. I will stay here for now.
How large was colonial New York City? I really had no idea, but surely it was larger than the Phan-garad I knew, which seemed like a city of 50,000 people at best.
I was halfway through his first journal, and he’d barely mentioned the clans I was dealing with, even though he’d given detailed descriptions of the five races. Silas encountered much the same reception I had.
The people, all female, have greeted my presence with jubilation, consumed as they are with desire to bear my children. They crowd my home day and night, causing much consternation to my wives. I have asked for assistance from the city mothers, but they have thus far refused to aid me, instead each inviting me to retire to their strongholds. I do not trust their motives, so I have declined all invitations as graciously as I can manage. But I fear trouble is ahead.
As did I.
Silas spent about another twenty pages discussing the minutiae of Phan-garad, but too much of it was things that no longer seemed to exist. I had seen no gardens like what he spoke of; even the greenery of the district I lived in paled in comparison to the things he described. He compared them the legendary Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and while I had no clear idea what that meant – I majored in finance in college, not history – I’d seen nothing anywhere close to it.
I put the journal down and went to find Kisarat.
I found her across the hall in the small sitting room on this floor with Ayarala and Therani, one of the other girls who, like Lorelat and Merindra, arrived in the first group the clan leaders sent. She came back around the same time Lorelat did, and like Lorelat, was now pregnant. She was talalong and also Kisarat’s cousin, so like Lorelat and Eladra, she also stayed. The other two, a dwenda named Fayela and a linyang named Sho-pat, had also come back, gotten pregnant, then returned to their clans.
There was a reason Narilora was so upset with herself.
I sat down with the three of them.
“Did there used to be public gardens in Phan-garad? Gardens that Silas would have described as something beautiful and remarkable?”
Ayarala and Therani looked at Kisarat, who nodded.
“Yes. But not for a kumala-talon, at least. The city’s gardens were kept by the cunelo and dwenda. There are several famous paintings of them. But they are gone now. They required too many people to care for them, and in time they could no longer be maintained. There were simply not enough people to do it. One by one, they fell into ruin. The places where they used to be are dead open space now, except for this area around our home. It is all that remains, what little there is.”
She managed a weak smile, then sighed.
“They were things of great beauty, from the pictures I have seen and the accounts I read during my studies. They are a great loss. If you look around outside, you can still see the traces of them. I have done it myself. If you want, I could show you.”
The sadness and resignation in her voice was almost palpable.
“Wow.”
“This is our world, Will. I am sorry.”
“Silas writes about a vibrant city of beauty and life. A city much larger than this one.”
“Three kumala-talons, when he was here, that was Phan-garad.”
I had to look out the glass behind them, where I could see the lights of the buildings around us. But too many were dark and empty.
The girls all looked up and behind me. I turned around to see two of the linyang guards in the doorway.
“My tsulygoi,” one of them said, “there is a messenger here from our clan leader.”
“Ceriniat?”
“Yes, my tsulygoi.”
I got up. As I got closer, I recognized her as one of the guards I’d fought escaping from aJia’jara’s confinement. They had once been part of the Long Claw. But the nine of them had surrendered to me after the fight, because for a linyang, to be defeated in combat by a male meant only one of two things: mating, or if the male declined to claim her, suicide.
I hadn’t wanted any of them to kill themselves, so I claimed them. That meant they were mine now, no longer part o
f the Long Claw. But I’d done it in a way that left the mating elements ambiguous. I had never treated them like wives, and they seemed content with that. Yet now and then, I saw a yearning in their eyes that filled me with regret. They were female, and on some level, I knew they wanted to bear children if they could. And for the most part, they were easy to look at, even if they paled in comparison to my other wives. So the possibility had occurred to me.
But.
I knew if I mated with any of them, and put them with child, it would kill Narilora. So I had done my best to ignore it.
I followed her down to the first floor, where I found another linyang, dressed in the uniform of the Long Claw, waiting just inside the front door.
She nodded at me quickly.
“Makalang, the clan leader wishes to speak with you.”
“At this hour?”
“Yes. It is a matter of great importance.”
“What is this matter?”
“I do not know. I was only told to come here and request your presence.”
“Okay.” I turned to the guard, who had followed me down. “Get Narilora. And four more of your sisters. Geared up.”
“Yes, my tsulygoi!” And she ran off to round the rest of them up.
Ceriniat’s messenger stood by the door, waiting, but not protesting at the delay this would entail. The linyang were much like the sorai. Even for something like this, I needed to arrive with an entourage.
Narilora came down first, carrying my armor and katana. I took them from her and pulled everything on. She had her sword, since she normally carried it with her.
“What’s going on?”
“You know as much as I do.”
The guard returned with four more linyang a few moments later, all armed with short crystal swords and daggers. They assembled around me.
“Let’s go.”
We followed the linyang messenger out the front gate. The crowd outside had thinned considerably by now, down to maybe a few dozen. Some of them had actually been camping outside my door. They jumped up excitedly and followed us, though much more quietly than that afternoon.
We reached Ceriniat’s compound in a minute or two. It was ringed by a wavy crystalline wall, and her guards were waiting for us, pulling the gate open. Beyond was Ceriniat’s house, which resembled nothing so much as a pile of huge soap bubbles, even down to the swirling iridescence over their surface. I had been here before, so I knew the bubbles were all linked internally with chain bridges fashioned from intricately carved pieces of crystal.
Ceriniat was not just the clan leader of the linyang; she was also the head of the city’s most successful mercenary company. The clans were not in open conflict as they’d once been, but there were areas outside the cities and villages that were not safe for traveling merchants or mining groups. The Long Claw provided security for these operations, as well as other expensive services (like, for example, finding and capturing the makalang for the city’s most prominent male). That made her the wealthiest female in Phan-garad, and it showed in her house.
As we passed through the gate, I saw were not alone. A group of sorai guards stood to one side, and beyond them a group of talalong. I heard the noise of another group behind us and turned to see Loreloo with her cunelo guards coming in after us.
“Makalang,” she said.
“Clan leader.”
All that was missing was the dwenda, and I saw them now coming up behind the cunelo.
Ceriniat’s guard was at my side.
“Makalang, the clan leader requests that you enter.”
There were customs to these meetings. The guards stayed outside; the leaders met with only a single second. That was why I’d brought Narilora.
The two of us followed the guard into Ceriniat’s house. The guard led us up a stairway to one of the crystal chain bridges, which led across the largest bubble to another one protruding from its upper third. Inside was a large meeting room with a clear domed ceiling letting in the night sky. Ceriniat waited for us with a single member of the Long Claw. Varycibe and Uhagian, the elderly leader of the talalong, stood there with her, both with guards of their own. Narilora entered behind me, and about ten seconds later, Missok, the leader of the dwenda, appeared. I had met her before, as she was Yisaraq’s older sister. I nodded to her.
All of them wore small bits of silver jewelry. Silver and other metals existed on Taitala, but in extremely small quantities, so small that they were valued only as expressions of wealth and influence. That was their role at this meeting.
“Welcome,” Ceriniat said. She gestured to the table behind us. It was set with six glasses and a pitcher of water. When we sat down, she filled each glass, and the rest of us passed them randomly around the table several times. Then each of us drank. It was another tradition of these meetings, to show both trust and to symbolically frustrate any attempt to poison one’s guests. Each of our seconds stood a few steps behind us.
“We are here to discuss the matter of today’s events,” Ceriniat said when we were done with the water.
“The usual message was found?” Loreloo asked.
“Yes,” Varycibe said. “In an alley, a block away from my residence. The Black Sky is Coming, once again. Nothing more.”
“Yet still we know nothing as to its meaning,” Missok said.
“No.”
Ceriniat turned to me.
“We asked you here, makalang, in hopes you might offer some wisdom from your world, as this problem has frustrated us thus far.”
“There are certainly groups like this in my world,” I said. “There was a time I fought against one of them, in a war about six or seven talons ago. But normally they seek to kill people, or stop something from happening, or at the very least send a clear message about something important to them. Have there been any patterns in the buildings they have destroyed?”
“None that we can perceive. Always empty, but that is all.”
“So they don’t want to kill. Why would someone want to destroy abandoned buildings?”
“If we knew, you would not be sitting here, makalang,” Uhagian said in a low hiss.
“When did it start?”
“A talon ago, give or take a few sampars,” Varycibe said.
“Was today was the first coordinated bombing?”
“Yes. Until now, it has been one explosion here, one there. Perhaps ten altogether. Never so close in time. Usually many sampars between them.”
“That raises the question of what’s changed.”
They all stared at me.
“For a talon, they only destroy random buildings. Now that I’m here, they do something like this.” I explained my theory about the crosshairs. “In my world, that’s a message.”
“Indeed,” Varycibe replied.
I leaned forward onto my fists.
“My wife Kisarat, the talalong, has told me quite a bit about the history of Phan-garad. You don’t need me to tell you this city seems to be dying. But I was struck by some of the things she’s told me. There used to be much more beauty here. A sense of wanting to keep it that way. That seems to be gone.”
There were several long sighs. Missok finally spoke.
“You perceive correctly.”
“It seems to me that there are two ways of looking at this, this act of destroying the empty shells of the city’s past. Either someone wants to hasten that decline, or they’re trying to prune the dead branches in hopes of giving life to what’s left.”
I could see the wheels turning in their heads.
“So why strike at the city center so boldly?” Ceriniat asked. “Why at you?”
“If you wanted this city to die, how would you react to something that offered a way to renew it?”
“The children,” Uhagian hissed. “They are threatening the children.”
“That puts me in mind of something,” Ceriniat said. “A thing I know some of you object to. But my people have had more dealings with them than all of you.”
“Their threats to the children of the other clans are a matter of history.”
“Myth!” Varycibe shot back.
“There are stories, Varycibe,” Loreloo said. “Whether you choose to believe them or not.”
“The makalang was a mere story until very recently,” Ceriniat said. “Yet there he sits.”
The rest of them looked at me, then back at Ceriniat.
“What do you propose?” Varycibe finally said.
“We scour the city for them. Bring those we find in for questioning. We may find clues in their dens.”
“There are no panikang dens in this city,” Varycibe said.
“None we know of, at least,” Uhagian replied.
“What are the panikang, exactly?” I asked. “I know only the name.”
“They are the sixth clan,” Varycibe said. “The black ones, who live by night. They have fur like linyang, but shorter tails, and flaps of skin that allow them to fly. But they have always avoided the city, and they keep to themselves in the forest.”
“But they mate with males, as you do?”
“Rarely, and only briefly. They do not remain as wives. There are a few tsulygoi in the forest who favor them. So they visit those males, mate, and leave. And as this behavior is quite different from the other clans, there are many wild and irresponsible stories about them, mostly to frighten children.”
“But they are also said to kidnap the children of other clans at times,” Uhagian said.
Varycibe sighed but said nothing.
“Are we agreed?” Ceriniat asked. The others, save Varycibe, murmured assent.
Finally, the old sorai leaned back in her chair.
“I am agreed, if we can conduct this calmly and rationally. No mobs or massacres. I want no war with the panikang, if indeed they have anything at all to do with this. I will concede that it could be a small, disgruntled group of them. It could not be the entire clan.”
Ceriniat nodded, as did the others.
The Black Sky Page 3
