Farewell to the Liar

by D. K. Fields

  ‘You’re quiet this evening, Palla. Are you tired?’

  ‘I was just listening about the mountains.’

  ‘What? I thought we were too foolish to just listen.’

  ‘Sometimes it’s in the lessons meant for others that we learn the most.’

  Unun arches an eyebrow. ‘Where did you hear that?’

  ‘I didn’t hear it. I just said it.’

  She is unused to such wisdom from her palla. It worries her. Aphorisms are the harbingers of the dying mind. Fortunately, he keeps any more to himself.

  The street ends in a series of steep steps. Normally Unun would tackle them without thinking. But her palla prefers to take the vertical ropebox, which they have to wait for. The woven box is its own kind of deliberately ponderous. Reassuring. Predictable. Safe. Berklum cranes his neck to watch it. The pulley system is as simple and old as the Rusting Mountains themselves. There was no living without the ropeboxes, from the very beginning. That was, except for the children.

  ‘Do you miss your hairs?’ Berklum asks.

  Unun follows his logic easily enough – were she still a young child, she could have quickly climbed where the ropebox inched. ‘Not always,’ she says, a little surprised by her own honesty. ‘But most days.’

  ‘I’ve forgotten,’ he says. ‘I suppose you’ll forget too, in your time.’

  ‘I don’t think so. That feeling… the freedom. It’s still missing from me.’

  ‘You cried. That first day and every day after for a whole year.’

  ‘No—’

  ‘You did. I cried too, for you,’ Berklum says. ‘To see you paw uselessly at a wall was the hardest thing. Worse than your meiter’s death.’

  Unun clears her throat. ‘Meiter was ready. I wasn’t.’

  The ropebox settles drily on the ground. A lone woman nods her way past, and Berklum struggles to remember her name. Was she the tailor who knows her Perlish from her Wayward? No, no that is a taller woman. A baker? Did he see the ghost of flour in her hair?

  It isn’t until the ropebox lurches upwards that he realises he doesn’t know the woman at all.

  Three curling streets and two boxes later, they reach the top of the spire. There is a short queue for the ropeway over to the ridge. Unun knows the man ahead of them, and they enter into an easy, empty conversation. Berklum looks out, past the edge, to where the ropes run into the billowing cloud and smoke. The darkest patches are from the Tear below, ash-flecked and soot-heavy. The lighter, cleaner clouds descend from above but are soon stained. Everything that begins above is ruined, eventually.

  ‘Not ruined, just different,’ Berklum says.

  Perhaps it is a matter of perspective.

  ‘Look at that. Who could say ruined?’

  Unun and her friend look too. Among the dark clouds, sparks flare into life and then die. So many, they flash like a shoal of fish.

  ‘A what of fish?’

  ‘You’re right, Palla, it does look like a fish.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t,’ her friend says. ‘Besides, only tatterwings can fly in those clouds.’

  Berklum squints at him. ‘How is your shoulder?’

  Without thinking, the man rolls his arm. ‘Much better, much stronger. And no pain.’

  ‘Good. Good.’

  They resume their prattle, and Berklum resumes his vigil. He did not see fish scales in the clouds, he saw the Tear. He saw heat and violence – or the echoes of those things. Eventually, he sees the ropebox.

  Winched along on metal-reinforced ropes, the box between the mountains is three times the size of the vertical kind. There is a wide, cleared area, which houses the large wheels of the mechanism as well as room for embarking and disembarking. The box thuds into place against its restraints. A door swings open, and a stream of people come out, including a couple of Seeders. They look paler than usual and not so steady on their feet. More than one person offers to help them along.

  A man with brushes instead of hands begins working on the box’s woven sides. Those in the queue turn away and cover their mouths as dust and ash fill the air. But the man’s work makes sure there are no stray sparks or embers. Satisfied, the man gives a nod, and the queue begins to board. When their turn comes, Unun hands over the two pennies as if she might not see the like again.

  ‘You worry too much,’ Berklum says.

  ‘You don’t worry enough.’

  ‘Then together we should satisfy the Keeper.’

  ‘There’s no satisfying any of them,’ Unun says.

  ‘Would a ropebox plummeting out of the sky do?’

  More than one other passenger glares at Berklum. He waves them out of existence. He gazes out at the brutal, unrelenting beauty below. The black hills and red rivers of the Tear can only be seen in snatches between the clouds of smoke. From a thousand or so feet above, the land becomes an unreal thing: small when it is actually vast, quaint when it is deadly, barren when there is life. Perhaps it is because the view is never uninterrupted for long, but Berklum has not tired of it in all his years. It alone is worth the penny fare.

  Unun is not so taken with heights. She stares resolutely at her hands. Hands she is trying to still.

  ‘Tell me a story,’ Berklum says, hoping to distract her.

  ‘Palla, please.’ Unun blushes, glancing at those nearby. Her friend is no longer with them, but on the other side of the basket.

  ‘You don’t visit any Seats,’ Berklum says. ‘You don’t leave offerings, not at the workshop or anywhere I’ve seen. If you’re so keen to please the Mute, you could stop nagging me so much.’

  ‘Fine. A story.’ The box lurches, and everyone tenses, many grabbing hold of the sides. Berklum takes his daughter’s shaking hand and smiles.

  ‘Our neighbour, four doors down,’ she says, ‘you know her but can never remember her n—’

  ‘I do remember Iri!’

  ‘Well, Hassi, she has two children. Two boys. She is up day and night with those boys. Her husband travels to the northern realms so often she’s starting to wonder if she imagined the whole marriage. Except the boys are a regular cure for such wishful thinking.

  ‘One of the boys, the younger, has recently found the joy of dropping things on his meiter. She endured the same with the elder. It’s just a stage.’

  ‘You did the same,’ Berklum says. ‘From the top shelves of the workshop.’

  ‘Do you want to hear a story or not?’

  Berklum nods. So do a number of other listeners.

  ‘Hassi’s youngest, he is nimble. When he can be made to concentrate, he’s as fine a nester as any on the spire. Says he enjoys sneaking about the rockface and telling the Bailiff all about it after. All this is to say, he’s not just good for climbing, but good for holding too. He drops nothing by accident.

  ‘So when a metal foot hits Hassi top of the crown in her own home, she knows it’s no accident. Least, she knows an hour or two later when she comes round on the floor, her blood sticky and tacky on one of their best rugs. When the room stops spinning, she looks up to find two pairs of eyes belonging to the most frightened two boys in the Tear. They’ve cried themselves silent, fearing she was dead.

  ‘And Hassi, instead of raging or shouting, she starts laughing. This scares the boys all the more. They start crying again, and Hassi only laughs the harder.

  ‘The foot belonged to her dead palla-in-law. When he was alive, she always said he’d be the death of her. “Almost,” she said, hefting the foot.

  ‘Now, any time her youngest son looks ready to drop something on her, she starts laughing. He soon thinks better of it.’

  Those listening nearby smirk or find their own way of showing their appreciation for Hassi’s struggles. Berklum is more pensive, and this is not lost on his daughter.

  ‘Did you not like the story, Palla?’

  ‘As good as any I’ve heard of late.’ He spits over the side and rubs at his teeth. ‘I made that foot,’ he says.

  ‘Made to last,’ Unun says
.

  ‘Unlike the rest of him.’

  There isn’t much to say to that, so Unun goes back to staring at her hands, the other passengers at their feet, Berklum at the clouds. The story may not have been election-worthy, but it did what any story – good or poor – should: it passed the time. They are not so far from the ridge now. It is into this after-story quiet, when each man and woman is alone in that small crowd, that Berklum cries out: ‘Rainbow!’

  No one else hears him, not properly, just that the noise is enough to startle them. An unexpected noise from an old man, the kind most prefer to ignore. His daughter humours him.

  ‘What’s that, Palla?’

  ‘Did you see it?’ He turns to her, years younger. ‘Did you?’

  ‘See what? A tatterwing bat?’

  ‘The rainbow.’ He leans out, far as he can, and eyes the black ever-moving air below.

  ‘But Palla, you need rain for a rainbow. We’ve had no rain in—’

  ‘There!’

  A flash of colour. A flash of all the colours. Not just the red of molten rock, or the orange of the embers. But blues and purples and greens and everything in-betweens. He sees them all in a parting of clouds.

  She sees nothing. It is writ large and clear on her face. Where there should have been wonder, there is worry.

  All the way to the ridge, he watches for more. He will not be dissuaded nor distracted, no matter how hard Unun tries. Eventually she gives up and leaves him to it, unable to join his hunt for the rainbow. She can’t look out of the ropebox, not for long, the urge to throw herself out grows too readily, too strong.

  Berklum doesn’t see the colours again in the clouds between the spire and the ridge. But patience, bonesmith, they will come to you once more.

  ‘So you say.’

  There’s little under the Audience that happens by accident. And even those rarities find their way into someone’s story.

  *

  The ridge is wide and thin at its peak, and short as a mountain can be. We Rustans aren’t too imaginative in our naming of things. We name it as we see it. A ropebox is a box threaded through with ropes. The Rusting Mountains are mountains the colour of rust. And each one of those mountains dresses a fair way different from the rest – like the flat, stunted ridge. That the other mountains look down on the ridge is just part of Rustan life.

  Even so, Berklum should be too old for such nonsense. He’s seen the good and the bad of all the Rusting Mountains and knows there’s little between the two, little but perspective. But old habits have a habit of outliving their welcome.

  He accepts a stranger’s help down from the ropebox, Unun following behind him. They hurry from the hewn, sheltered landing; a woman is already brushing down the woven sides of the box, creating her own clouds. The steps that lead deeper into the ridge are steep but fortunately few in number. Berklum takes care with them, not concerned by the younger bodies streaming past him. Their haste is just their affirmation of what Berklum has known for a good while now: we all have somewhere to be, and no time to be there.

  Unlike the winding, spiral streets of the spire, the ridge’s main thoroughfare is a single, wide, flat affair. It’s possible to go lower in the ridge, someway lower still, but the air is not so good down there. Unun takes her palla’s arm as they make their way along the street. Many trades and shops have closed for the evening, while others are just getting started. At the entrance of a drinking establishment, Berklum slows, feeling a sudden thirst as if his throat is shaken down with sawdust. But Unun is having none of it. She doesn’t drink, remember? Still blames the Seeders’ spirits and hops for her meiter’s passing. When she’s not blaming you.

  ‘That was a long time ago,’ Berklum says, stopping at the swinging doors of the barroom.

  Unun looks too. She’s remembering another time, isn’t she? Maybe you were there, Berklum, or maybe you were in the workshop. Maybe her meiter took her here, too young for such a place. What did she see? What did she hear? Was this a formative time for the little girl Unun, perched high on the wall of a barroom, her meiter drunk below?

  Berklum glances at his daughter, frightened of what he might see on her face if he stares too long. He pulls her away despite his thirst.

  At his age, when you’ve lived such a life, even a thirst is complicated.

  Their destination is not so far now, and Berklum can see the forge-light warming the street as it darkens. Lanthan’s workshop, so different from his own, but she’s a bonesmith he respects nonetheless.

  He clangs his metal knuckles against the workshop door and waits – the traditional Rustan way to announce oneself, metal-to-metal.

  Lanthan is busy fixing a new hip. The smell of iron, old and new, is everywhere. The recipient is lying face down on a polished table, suitably senseless on a concoction of herbs and spirits. Lanthan’s gloved arms are streaked red, and the woman is humming.

  Berklum and Unun wait and watch, and they mostly watch while they wait. It is good to see another bonesmith at work – and not just at the forge. The affixing of a modification is just as much part of the craft as the crafting itself.

  ‘You see how she parts the rear muscle and clamps it?’ Berklum says. ‘Good access for the joint.’

  Unun nods. ‘Though it can make for a longer recovery.’

  ‘Some things take time.’

  A face appears above them, over the door. A boy, maybe seven or eight years old, looks down at them impassively.

  ‘Hello,’ he says, his voice high-pitched but oddly flat. ‘Meiter is busy.’

  ‘We can see that…’ Berklum struggles to remember the boy’s name, until Unun rescues him.

  ‘Thank you, Acti. We have a delivery of fingers.’

  ‘Meiter hates fingers,’ Acti says, as if this explains everything: their being there, Lanthan’s current business, the whims of the wind.

  ‘Tricky things, fingers,’ Berklum says. He wiggles his own three metallic fingers on his right hand as if to demonstrate. ‘Full replacement is impossible if you want this sort of movement. But grafting – there’s where we can make some real wonders.’

  Acti stares first at this strange old man’s fingers, then at his own, which are covered in fine hairs. They may as well be different species. The boy is sitting on a narrow shelf that runs at two feet below the ceiling. Most Rustan rooms have such a shelf, unless a conscious decision is made not to have children. Or to never invite any inside. We’ve learnt the hard way that not providing such succour and comfort for our children increases the kind of bad behaviour that Unun’s friend, Hassi, has endured.

  This boy’s shelf is bare of ornamentation, bare of potential projectiles, with only a pile of soft blankets in one corner. This is a very well-behaved little boy, even Berklum can see that. Unun can see it too – she herself had hoarded all manner of workshop tools and paraphernalia up on her shelf. She wasn’t a dropper; she simply enjoyed the having of things. Enjoyed the feel and shape and variety, and hiding them in a place for Unun and Unun alone.

  For her, the hardest part of her friend Hassi’s story is the idea of having a sibling. How horrible that must be.

  ‘Come in, if you’re coming,’ Lanthan says finally, as she straightens. The recipient lies open still, their new hip joint settling into its pocket of bone and muscle. Lanthan rolls her neck, and there’s an audible click and crank. Yes, Berklum, we know: spine work’s dangerous, fingers are tricky, and no one appreciates a good bonesmith in their own time. We are listening.

  ‘About time someone did,’ Berklum says, satisfying everyone and ambling into the workshop. He is getting better at this, starting to understand how this might work – the telling of his story. What a relief, you think, he is starting to test your patience. It would be a long afternoon with Old Man Berklum otherwise.

  They are all looking at him: Unun, Acti and Lanthan.

  ‘Your fingers,’ Berklum says, unwrapping them from the close-to-clean cloth. One index and one middle. Not complete, not inert bl
ocks of metal in that way, but grafts made to measure. Flexible, useful.

  Lanthan inspects the work, turning each graft over using a pair of delicate tongs. The middle finger is a series of connected partial tubes, shaped and filed to an exact depth and following a demanding set of contours. Berklum inspected the client’s crushed hand not long after the accident, at Lanthan’s request. She quickly recognised the need for Berklum.

  It feels good to be needed, doesn’t it, old man?

  Berklum harrumphs, and Lanthan finishes her inspection.

  ‘Fine work,’ she says, ‘as expected.’

  ‘I appreciated the challenge.’

  ‘Are you really that short of work?’

  Unun almost chokes on her own tongue as a means of holding it.

  ‘Work worth doing,’ Berklum says. ‘Ever since that second-rate butcher opened up on the cone… no one will travel for quality. I’ve been stuck making shins.’

  Lanthan can only grimace. ‘Save me the trip, and I’ll send more work your way.’

  ‘Good work,’ he says.

  ‘Good work,’ she agrees. ‘Care to watch me finish up?’ It is an open invitation, but they all know it’s first and foremost for Unun’s benefit. She’s eager, as a bonesmith’s apprentice should be. You have to love the craft, love the work; that much, at least, Berklum has given her. She hurries to the table, bobbing like a bird to best see the other woman work.

  Berklum watches long enough to satisfy himself of Lanthan’s method of stitching, and then his attention wanders. The boy, Acti, is back on the shelf. But he is watching too. Everyone except Berklum looking at the prone body on the table, at the gradually disappearing wound, at the polished surfaces spattered in blood. Not at the blankets that fall from the shelf.