The Floating Islands

by Rachel Neumeier

  Araenè had absolutely no idea how granite or any other kind of stone could be “born in fire,” far less which stones those might be. She shook her head.

  Master Tnegun sighed. “What do they teach in those libraries? Anything at all other than parochial Island law and limited classics? Well, Kanii will no doubt be able to direct you to appropriate references. Now, the other aspects of this sphere?”

  The dark molasses proved to reflect a powerful kind of magic of making and unmaking, far in advance, Master Tnegun assured Araenè, of anything she should expect to manage. “Unmaking is not as difficult as making, but has costs of its own that are not immediately apparent to the untutored mind,” he told her. “When you are ready to truly commence the study of magic, we shall concentrate on making. And the final use to which this stone has been put?”

  Araenè bent her head over the sphere, coaxing the molasses to recede into the background so that the ginger could dominate. Ginger turned out to be associated with spells of vision and foretelling. Master Tnegun explained that every kind of stone influenced the sort of visibility and divination to which it was suited, adding offhandedly that three hundred forty-three kinds of stone could be considered relevant to the study of magic.

  “Three hundred forty-three?” Araenè repeated, appalled.

  Master Tnegun was amused. “Indeed. A most useful and appropriate number, as it divides by seven three times over. But that is not so many. You will learn all those very soon. More complicated is the study of how different forms of spellwork interact when introduced into stone. There are nine hundred eighty-four spheres in the hall of spheres and mirrors. To commence your studies, you may categorize them all for me. As it is impossible to begin your instruction in the heart of magic, you may as well begin that task today.”

  “Nine hun—what does that divide by?” Araenè demanded.

  “One might have hoped you had learned mathematics if not geology, young Arei. It divides by two, three, four, six, and eight. A very useful, powerful number.” The master lifted an amused, scornful eyebrow. “So many of you young ones don’t believe mathematics can possibly be useful because you see no immediate use for it. Mathematical theory, fortunately, is also something you may study at once, so we may rectify any shortcomings you may have in this area.” He paused. “Of course, if you find the study tedious, you may admit my mind to yours, and we will proceed with a more applied course of study.”

  Araenè glared, then jumped to her feet and stalked toward the door. Reaching it, she said over her shoulder, “Nine hundred eighty-four. Very well!” She stepped through the door, closed it hard behind her, and then paused, realizing too late that she had no idea at all where the hall of spheres and mirrors lay. First she found this infuriating—then funny. She choked back giggles. But then, with no transition, as though any random emotion might become a gateway for grief, she found herself abruptly fighting back tears.

  Horrified at the idea that anyone might find her in tears in the hall, Araenè fled to her apartment. She did not even realize at once how easily she had found her apartment, only flung herself through its door, ran straight across to the window, jumped down into the tangled garden without pausing, tucked herself down among the vines and flowers, and let herself cry in the safe privacy the wild growth afforded her.

  The tears, once allowed to storm through her, did not last long; in some strange way, Araenè felt she owned that fierce burst of grief no more than the earlier fit of giggles. As seemed so common since … since … The strange abrupt storms that shook her did not really feel like her own emotions. Araenè rubbed her face on her sleeve, leaned back against the garden wall, and tilted her face up to the sky.

  The morning sun, already powerful, somehow made Araenè feel more real, more anchored to the moment and to herself; the fragrance of the flowers rose dizzyingly into the hot air around her. Birds were quiet at this time of the day, but a small troop of mustached brown marmosets bobbed their heads at her and chattered. Calming at last, Araenè lifted her face to the sun and thought hard about safe things: about wheat dough and how differently rice dough behaved, about the different qualities of palm sugar and cane sugar. She knew she ought to be thinking about spheres—nine hundred eighty-four spheres! And how was one supposed to know that nine hundred eighty-four was divisible by three or eight without actually dividing it? And why did it matter?

  She knew she ought to go find a book on mathematical theory, or on kinds of stone. Maybe Kanii would be able to explain things to her? More likely he would be shocked at how little she knew: he would probably guess she’d never been schooled at a library. He might even—probably not, but he might even guess why.

  How long would it take to learn three hundred and whatever kinds of stone? Not long, Master Tnegun said. How long was “not long,” and how disgusted would he be when she didn’t learn them that fast? And nine hundred eighty-four spheres. And he clearly intended to try to let sheer tedium drive her into letting him into her mind. What would he do when she wouldn’t? Or couldn’t? Eventually he would send her away, Araenè supposed. Did she care? Her earlier moment of panic at the thought had been … exaggerated, maybe. She had money.… Well, Trei had money, but she could get all she needed. She could take a room at the University.… She could cook at Cesera’s and take the next apprentice position a master chef offered.…

  She was uneasily aware that she could have done that from the beginning, never mentioning the hidden school to Trei. Instead she had come here. Nor did she want to leave now. She didn’t even know exactly why she wanted to stay at this school and learn the attributes of nine hundred eighty-four spheres, even if she couldn’t let Master Tnegun show her the true heart of magic.… In fact, probably she didn’t really want to stay, she just told herself she ought to want that, though, Gods knew, the only thing she should want was a suitable marriage and a wealthy household to manage.

  Everything was confusing, and thinking about it made her want to cry again, though she didn’t know why. Both the threatening tears and the confusion made her angry. Scowling, Araenè rubbed her face again, got to her feet, hesitated for a moment, and then deliberately stalked across the garden and put her hand on the gate.

  She’d thought the gate would be locked. But the tastes of fenugreek and fennel and a high note of sweet fragrant heat burned across her tongue and her fingertips, and the gate swung easily open. The noise and dust and sheer commotion of the Third City streets rolled through the gate into her garden.

  Araenè half wanted to walk away from the hidden school into the freedom of Third City. She could feel herself relax just standing in her garden, listening to the bustle of the busy streets. She could go anywhere, at whatever pace she chose; she could speak to anyone, browse in any shop. No one would question her—no one would really notice her at all. When they saw her, they would only see Arei. Out in Third City, no one would expect anything of Arei at all.

  And she wanted that. Didn’t she?

  Yet she did not step through the gate. In the end, she swung the gate closed once more, stepped back through the window into her apartment, and went grimly up to the hall of spheres and mirrors to begin examining the nine hundred eighty-four spheres it contained.

  9

  The kajuraihi were the first to spot the Tolounnese warships, barely a week after Trei’s return to the novitiate.

  The kajuraihi had been keeping watch on the Tolounnese coast, especially on the harbor at Teraica, and even the one farther north at Goenn. If Tolounn did launch an offensive, those were considered the most likely ports from which to launch it. So the kajuraihi were keeping watch: a distant and sporadic watch, for not every kajurai had the stamina to reach the Tolounnese coast, even with the floating rocks that served as scattered waystations. But, the novices now learned, the Island wingmasters had been sending their strongest kajuraihi on that long journey twice a senneri ever since the previous year’s great monsoon storms had ceased.

  “And now they’ve seen unmistakab
le evidence that Tolounn is planning war,” Ceirfei told them. He had known from the first, of course. The ignorance novices normally suffered was not for him. But now he passed his knowledge on to the rest of them. “Ships, gathering at Teraica—big but narrow, built for speed, not cargo. Plenty of canvas, but ranks of oars for close-in work. Decks sheathed with metal …” Here Ceirfei’s tone grew doubtful. “Or so we are told.”

  “Against clingfire, maybe?” Tokabii asked. “But the sails?”

  Ceirfei shrugged. “We’re not sure. They may think their mages can protect them from fire. And from dragon winds, and from everything else we can do.”

  Trei said, “Tolounn wouldn’t move against us unless they thought they could win.” No one else commented about the “us,” but the word rang oddly in his own ears.

  “Maybe they’re just ambitious?” Tokabii suggested, uncharacteristically diffident. “Maybe they’re excited and just forgot about clingfire?”

  No one laughed. Genrai said kindly, “The Tolounnese Empire isn’t a mean drunk, ’Kabii. It doesn’t swing a fist without looking to make sure what it’s hitting—and that it’s bigger. Of course, it usually is bigger.”

  “So what do we do?” Rekei asked, looking at Ceirfei.

  “What we’re told, I suppose.” Ceirfei hesitated. Then he looked at Trei, drew a piece of paper over from a pile in front of Rekei, and began to sketch. “The Tolounnese have these things at Teraica. Down at the harbor’s edge. Big.” He carefully drew a tiny human figure at the edge of the paper to show the scale. “They have three, right in a row. They’re all like this. They pour coal down this chute here. There must be huge forges within, but we don’t know what great fire magic they’re meant to invoke.”

  Trei stared at the sketch.

  “What is it?” Kojran wanted to know, craning forward to examine the drawing. “Some kind of, no, I guess not. All right, what?”

  “It’s a steam engine,” Trei said. He asked Ceirfei, “Are there wheels that turn? Pistons that move up and down?”

  Ceirfei looked down at the sketch, as though details he hadn’t drawn might suddenly appear in it. “Not that I know.”

  “What’s a piston?” Tokabii asked.

  Trei floundered, looking for words. He’d never tried to explain steam power before, and found that it wasn’t easy when his audience didn’t know the first thing about the principles. “Well, this is obviously a steam engine. It’s for making things move. Boats, wagons, mine scoops … What you do is, you pour in the coal, and the fire heats water, and the water turns into steam, and the steam pushes and makes a wheel turn or a piston go up. If there aren’t any wheels or pistons, then I don’t know.…”

  “Steam pushes?” Tokabii said skeptically.

  “Well …” Trei didn’t quite know how to explain this.

  “So the Tolounnese provincar at Teraica has built these steam engines. So he’s making a lot of power, but he’s not using it to turn wheels or lift pistons,” Ceirfei said, ignoring the details of how exactly steam power worked. “And if they aren’t using the power at Teraica … then … is it possible for mages to gather power from engines like these and channel it into magic?” He paused. “Power, access to power, that always limits what mages can do. They never have enough adjuvants, do they? But if Tolounnese mages have learned how to use steam engines for power …”

  Trei hesitated. He’d never heard of anything like that. But … “I can’t see why they’d go to the trouble of pouring coal into those furnaces if they weren’t getting power out,” he said slowly. “Artificers make and use engines; mages don’t. Only … maybe they’ve learned they can. I think you’re right. I think Tolounn must have mages channeling that power out of Teraica and using it somewhere else.”

  “Or storing it, to use against us. How, specifically? Can you guess?”

  Trei shook his head uncertainly. He felt as though he should be able to guess how exactly a Tolounnese warship might use that power, but he couldn’t. Warships and furnaces, magecraft and steam power: obviously the Tolounnese planned to use their engines as a source of power when they attacked the Islands. But he had no idea how they might do it.

  Across the table, Genrai said tentatively, “If they—”

  The door was flung open, and Rei Kensenè burst in. He said sharply—to all of them, but mostly to Ceirfei—“A Tolounnese fleet of warships has set sail. No one knows what they mean to do—at least, what is clear, but no one can guess how they plan to do it. They’re expected to be at Milendri as early as the day after tomorrow.”

  “Well,” said Ceirfei, “I suppose we’ll find out what they plan to do, and how.”

  They found out. “The ships are carrying a tremendous amount of power with them,” Ceirfei told the novices, relaying information as he got it. “We know from where, don’t we? Each ship has a mage, and they’re clearing the dragons right out of the sky as they approach. Pushing them entirely away from the Islands with sheer brute strength.”

  “They aren’t,” Rekei said, voicing the general disbelief.

  “They are. And as we lose the living wind of the sky dragons, the Islands they pass settle lower and lower. Some of the smallest Islands have fallen right out of the sky into the sea.” There was an appalled pause, and Ceirfei added hastily, “It’s not that bad! The big Islands don’t lose height so quickly or violently, and as the warships pass an Island and leave it behind, the living winds come in behind them and the Island mounts again into the air—that’s what our observers see.”

  “But, of course,” said Rekei, “when those ships get to Milendri, they won’t just pass by.”

  “No,” agreed Ceirfei.

  Trei understood: the Tolounnese force didn’t want to drown the Islands; what they wanted was to make the Islands into a good, productive, tax-paying province. So they wouldn’t damage any Island if they could avoid it: instead they would head straight for Milendri, invest it with troops, and try for a swift, decisive stroke against the king and his court in Canpra.

  “So what are we doing that works?” Genrai asked, practical as ever.

  “Nothing, so far. We—kajuraihi—can overfly the warships if we stay high enough to avoid their dead air. But that doesn’t matter, because nothing we’re doing is helping. We’ve dropped clingfire, but the ships are very difficult to hit from that height.” But then Ceirfei fell silent, glancing up as steps sounded. A man put his head through the door. The man wore court white and a badge with a violet dragon; Ceirfei got stiffly to his feet.

  “Prince Ceirfei—” said the man.

  “I know. I’m coming,” said Ceirfei. He gave a distracted glance around at the rest of them, managed a strained smile, and went out without looking back.

  “Do you think he’ll come back this time?” Tokabii asked in a hushed tone.

  “The man said, ‘Prince Ceirfei,’ ” Genrai answered. “So I don’t think so, ’Kabii.”

  “He didn’t even say goodbye!”

  “He probably didn’t want to think about not coming back—”

  “They may send him back here if they need to hide him,” Trei suggested.

  Genrai rounded on him at once. “Stop it! Tolounn isn’t going to win. You think Tolounn is so wonderful, so unbeatable—”

  “You stop!” snapped Rekei, jumping to his feet. He clenched his fists, leaning forward. “Trei didn’t mean anything! What do you think, that he wants Tolounn to win?”

  Trei stared at them both, taken aback. It seemed obvious to him that Tolounn was going to win. Acknowledging that wasn’t a matter of loyalty or disloyalty. This new method Tolounn had, this way to somehow power magic with steam engines … Tolounnese artificers and mages must have been very clever to realize they could tie their arts together.

  But … he couldn’t help but be aware that it was disloyalty to want Tolounn to fail. But there was no way to be loyal to everybody. Uncle Redoenn’s voice echoed in his memory: You can’t stay here, Trei.… He had turned Trei away, sent him south. Trei
remembered the anger and the fear and, worse than either, the shame.… He had listened to Uncle Redoenn’s door shut behind him and, for the first time in his life, he had been ashamed of his half-Islander blood. He hadn’t really understood that at the time, but he’d known, without putting the knowledge into words, that what Uncle Redoenn had meant was, You’re not good enough for Tolounn or for me.

  And then Uncle Serfei, in contrast, had said warmly: You’re not Tolounnese; you’re my nephew. And Araenè, encouraging him before the kajurai audition, had assured him: You’re an Islander now. And that was true. Wasn’t it true? And didn’t he want it to be true? If he did, was it just because he still felt angry and ashamed?

  No. No, it wasn’t just what Uncle Redoenn had said. It was more than that. Wasn’t it more than that? Tolounn wanted to subjugate the Islands, make them pay taxes and furnish conscripts; they wouldn’t want to destroy the Islands. Tolounnese provinces benefited from belonging to a great Empire: Trei’s father had said that and he was sure it was true. But the Floating Islands didn’t want to be a Tolounnese province, especially not a subject province. And why should they be forced into the Tolounnese Empire? Just because Tolounn’s art was the art of war?

  And what about Ceirfei? The best that could happen to any captured members of the Island royal family was to be displayed in a triumphal procession in the Great Emperor’s city of Rodounnè and then imprisoned.

  Suddenly unable to sit still, Trei jumped up, paced, and found himself staring blankly out the windows at the sky. The crystalline winds whirled past, glittering and manylayered. He could see the winds because the sky dragons had given him a little of their magic: he was kajurai. He found he was angry, furious—and he knew who he should be angry with. Not the dragons. Not the Floating Islands. Tolounn had thrown him away; the Islands had given him a new family and a new life.

  Trei turned back to the other novices, glowering at them all. “I’m going to see the wingmaster,” he declared, and walked out while they were all gaping at him.