Way Walkers: Tangled Paths (The Tazu Saga)

by Leigh, J.

  As the carriage pulled away, he caught the eye of one of the blue-haired ladies. Her hair was on the paler end of the unusual blue hue, cut short in the back and long in the front, or tied behind with her bangs left unbound. Her startling Lu’shun-blue irises were ablaze amid a Tazu face of pale lavender scales. Something about her blunt consideration made him shiver, and then she was gone, left behind on the corner. Her pupils are round in the light. The oddity of a stranger who looked Tazu holding the gaze of a lowly moot left him feeling awkward.

  Ass’shiri punched him in the shoulder. “What’s got you so broodingly fascinated, huh?”

  “Round pupils in a Tazu’s eyes,” he murmured. “It looks so out of place.”

  “Heh, kind of like the slit pupils of Tazu eyes in your head,” Ass’shiri pointed out with a chuckle.

  “Yeah.” Something about her eyes stayed with him, leaving him with the sensation of a thin cord slowly tightening around the ember smoldering in his chest. “Anyway, I’m just feeling a little claustrophobic,” he said. “Tazu cities aren’t this tight, and we’ve been on the open road so long. I’ll adjust.”

  “Heh, you want tight spaces, I’ll take you to Clana-Ca’sta someday. Whole thing is inside a mountain. Talk about tight streets. Some of those back alleys you can barely wiggle down sideways.”

  “That was the first city, wasn’t it?” Talking made Jathen’s ember cool and his tight stomach settle. “Where the first Tazu king was born?”

  “Yep.” Ass’shiri grinned. “Where all the races hid from the Taint after the Great Fall of the Red, and the world was all screwed up.” He shook his head. “Can you imagine? All those people—humans and new races—cramped up like that for a thousand years?”

  “Yeah. It must have been tense as well as tight.”

  “Good thing they had the Children in there with them. I know the Clan Originals would have been cut to bits if it hadn’t been for Rhean.” He drew his finger across his neck. “There probably would have been a lot less of us ‘new races’ if the Twelve weren’t keeping the peace.”

  “It wasn’t all the races, though,” Hatori added. “Mostly it was humans and the first few generations of Born Clan. There were some of the Nijū-Iki and the Lu’shun, and a handful of the Tazu, but no more.”

  “That’s only five of the civilized races,” Jathen said. “Where were the others?”

  “They came about later, though not much later in the scope of things, around those first thousand years or so. No one knows about the Solki, but the Annarites were an experiment of good old Prothidian Altar to make a living demonic race that was loyal as well as evil. It didn’t work. Annarites might be temperamental, but it’s impossible to make an entire race evil. Now, whether or not Prothidian was behind the Muilan, Ki’ra, Okten, Tghyyr’sāqyn, and Avenea, no one is certain. Lot of theories, a lot of questions, but no certainty other than we’re all from humans, ’cept for the Solki.”

  “What about the Drannic?” Jathen asked.

  “You talked to one. Why didn’t you ask him?”

  “I doubt he would have told me straight.”

  “Well, there you go.”

  Jathen smiled, the ebb and flow of Hatori’s logic as familiar to him as the steady rock of the carriage over the cobblestones. Their ride stopped again as another jumbled flow of pedestrians moved across the street.

  Jathen said, “I thought this was a small, sleepy town.”

  “Only in the winter,” Jephue explained, looking in a mirrored compact to adjust his elaborate white-gold ringlets. “This is a holiday town, famous for the coastline and beaches. With the summer season soon upon us, Ca’june will be absolutely packed in a few weeks.”

  “Excellent.” Ass’shiri laughed. “Though I’ve got to comment on the irony of a Clansman choosing to live in a beach town.”

  Hatori snorted, tapping his cane on the carriage floor. “You’re sitting in the sunlight same as me, boy.”

  “Only because I have to.” Ass’shiri yawned, slipping down in his seat. “How much longer to this boarding house anyway? I’m about due for a noontime nap.”

  As they turned a corner, a U-shaped bay came into view, and Jathen smelled salt in the air. The brick façades of homes facing the water were painted an array of bright oranges, yellows, and salmon pinks, with trims in white and mint green. Jathen gasped when he first saw the brilliant blue of the ocean. He could not liken it to anything he’d ever encountered. It was simply the ocean, immeasurable and mysteriously beautiful.

  “Oh, thirty years since I’ve seen it and it still takes my breath away.” Jephue sighed. “We must take you out on the water in one of the little sailboats while we are here, Jathen.”

  “Preferably not at high noon.” Hatori yawned.

  When they pulled up in front of the boarding house, Jathen eyed the building with wariness while Ass’shiri and the driver unloaded their belongings. The yard was well kept with a pretty front garden, but the architectural details went against Jathen’s personal aesthetic. Balconets with elaborate balusters protruded from under second-story windows, and he couldn’t conceive of anything more irrational than those false balconies. All they did was collect dirt and plant refuse while providing the occasional safe haven for bird’s nests. They even look too narrow to climb on.

  Hatori knocked on the bright blue door. A pretty Tazu with peach-pink scales and blue hair answered—no, a Lu’shun who looked like a Tazu.

  She smiled at them, her blue eyes flying wide with delight. “You must be Master Chann.” She wiped her wet hands on a wrinkled apron. “I got your letter from the border post just this morning! Please, come in! I was just readying your rooms. You said four now instead of three, correct?”

  “Correct.” Hatori followed her inside with Jathen and Jephue not far behind. “And you must be Miss Alodie?”

  “Correct.”

  More blatant architectural irrationality greeted Jathen in the front foyer in the form of warm, cherrywood parquet. Granted, it was beautiful, but Tazu would never put such on their floors, not when claws could mar the delicate patterns. The oddity was another thing to prod at Jathen’s sense of displacement, reminding him he was not at home.

  “As requested, I’ve prepared two adjacent rooms on the third floor, and you have full run of the empty storage shed out back.” Alodie showed them around the spacious downstairs. “The parlor is here to your left; dining room is to your right. Breakfast is served at eight, tea at two, and dinner at seven. There is a bathroom and a lounge on this floor, and the kitchen takes up the entire back half.” Entering a parlor with pink wallpaper and neat little flowers, she turned to them. “Are there any mediums in your group?”

  “No,” Hatori said.

  “Ah, good.” Alodie visibly relaxed. “You’ll have a quieter time of it then.”

  “You have some sort of incorporeal?”

  “Oh, she’s benign,” the innkeeper explained. “The old owner. I’ve had six shandi out here in the last eight months, but she’s a stubborn thing. Loved the place and refuses to go. I’m about ready to put in a request to Tar’citadel to get a full-blown team down here.”

  Jathen tore his eyes away from the fireplace mantel. “Why? If she’s a benign ghost?”

  “Because staying isn’t good for her. She needs to go to the far side of the Veil and get her next life squared away, not keep fussing around here and moving furniture just because she doesn’t like how I rearranged it. If she moves that side table one more time, I swear by Turin I’ll hire a Rheanic and have her exorcised to the Pit like a common demon!” She shook her head. “Anyway, if anything of yours goes missing or gets moved, just know that it’s Ms. Mystral making trouble, and whatever it was will probably resurface.”

  Or probably get sold to pad the place’s bottom line, Jathen thought skeptically, only to see the
aforementioned side table slide across the parlor’s floor.

  “Mystral!” Alodie yelled, and the table halted in the center of the room, almost ruefully. She sighed, fluttering over to right the piece. “You’d think she’d at least return it.” She looked at Hatori. “So is this your first time in Ca’june?”

  “Yes, for most of us,” Hatori said. “But I lived in Fauve for quite a time, and Jephue was born not too far from here.”

  “Merverre,” Jephue clarified.

  “Oh, how nice to have you back! I love Merverre. It’s always so much quieter, even though it’s only one stop up the coast.” She beamed at Jephue then turned back to Hatori. “Where were you from originally?”

  “Clan Lands. Same as this one.” He hooked a thumb at Ass’shiri, who had just come in with their bags.

  “Ah, I thought that might be the case. Well, you will find your rooms equipped with blackout curtains tucked under the valances. Just pull the cord to adjust them. Do either of you need to Feed more than once a day?”

  “Nope,” Ass’shiri said while Hatori shook his head.

  “Good. Then just remember if you come see me sometime around six you can Feed from whatever livestock the chef’s planning on serving for dinner. He’ll be thrilled, as it saves him a few steps whenever we’ve Clan in house.”

  Hatori nodded. “Thank you. That’s perfect.”

  “Very good.” She peered sideways at Jathen. “And where does this adorable one hail from?”

  Jathen was mildly surprised by the compliment. “Tazu Nation.”

  “Oh, Tazu then.” She smiled sweetly. “Will you be needing the larger room to sleep as tyrn, or are you all right keeping to your compact self for a few nights?”

  Jathen blinked at her. “Um, I’m a moot. I can’t shift.”

  Alodie gasped. “I’ve gone and unknowingly trespassed on a tender point, haven’t I? Forgive me, love. I tend to try to keep track of races by the eyes. For the most part, it works, but there are exceptions. I am terribly sorry if I offended.”

  “It’s all right,” Jathen assured her, the knot in his stomach loosening considerably. “Spirit knows I’m an oddity even at the best of times.”

  Alodie giggled. “Well, I have no idea as to Tazu standards.” She reached out and stroked his cheek. “But I don’t think a single Lu’shun would disagree that you are a handsome oddity.”

  Jathen blushed.

  “All right, stop flirting,” Hatori said over Ass’shiri’s snickering. “Poor boy will lose all his blood to his face, and that will be the end of him. Beleskie knows he has little idea what to do with all those compliments.”

  She grinned. “We’ll have to remedy that.”

  Hatori sniffed as he nudged Jathen with his bag. “Yes, yes, after we’re unpacked. Upstairs for now, boy. Come along.”

  Jathen snatched up his pack from the foyer. Shadowing the charm master up a creaking set of spiral stairs, he asked, “What did she mean, ‘keep track by the eyes’?”

  “Lu’shun don’t talk about what they see when they look at themselves, or at other races for that matter,” he explained in between cursing at the narrow steps. “But if you pay attention long enough, you’ll pick up that, with the exception of the blue hair and eyes, they see everyone else the same as they see each other—however the hell that is.”

  “So, in a Lu’shun’s eyes, everyone is the same race? The only variant is individual features?”

  “Yep.”

  “Wow.” The notion was staggering. “Don’t their true forms show up in their art at all?”

  “No, they do not,” Jephue put in from behind him. “It’s a closely guarded secret amid full-blooded Lu’shun. Look into it. You’ll find almost no portraiture work in the Republic by full-blooded Lu’shun artists. If you do find it, then it’s because it was copied from another source, or the artist is a half blood.”

  “You know, I’ve always wondered,” Ass’shiri said. “What on the continent do they record as on a storage quartz?”

  “Either blurry or looking like whatever the Talent that recorded them saw.”

  “Wow,” Jathen said. “So if Hatori recorded Alodie’s image on a quartz, she’d look Clan when displayed by a crystal reader?”

  Jephue shrugged. “That or blurry.”

  Ass’shiri elbowed Jathen as they reached the third floor. “Wild, huh?”

  “I’m just trying to figure out if any of that might factor into the mystery of Jeph’s hair,” he said, only half joking.

  “He’ll never tell you, boy.” Hatori snorted, heading for a door on the left. “When are you going to learn that?”

  Jathen shook his head, went to the right, and entered the room he and Ass’shiri would be sharing. Though small by Tazu standards, the window offered a nice view of the street. A tiny triangle of the sea could be glimpsed between buildings, sparkling in the sun like an unset diamond. Heavy, lacy quilts covered the two beds. On the opposite wall stood a pair of wooden dressers that had flowers carved into the drawer fronts.

  “It looks like a girl’s room,” he muttered to Ass’shiri, who’d already claimed the bed closest to the door. A strong scent of potpourri assaulted his nostrils. “Smells like one, too.”

  “Don’t start,” Hatori said, appearing in the doorway. “This place is temporary, picked because of the lack of questions asked.”

  “Like why you need a storage space out back?” Jathen asked.

  “Exactly.” He grinned. “Speaking of such, I’m on my way to inspect it. Can the pair of you handle the rest of the bags?”

  “Only if you tell me why you need a storage space.”

  “I’m a charm master, Jathen.” He winked. “The space is for making master-charms.” He tipped his hat as he departed.

  “Come on,” Ass’shiri said. “To the bags! Then I’m taking my nap.”

  When the luggage had been brought up and placed in their respective rooms, Ass’shiri pulled down the blackout curtains for his nap. Taking advantage of the quiet, Jathen opted to make use of their private bathroom and have a soak in the tub.

  It felt good to be clean, really clean, for the first time in what felt like forever. No sand or grime or sweaty film rubbing in places better not thought about. The Lu’shun at least knew how to properly equip a bathroom, even if the white ceramic tub was a bit on the small side. Jathen took his time drying and dressing, then left Ass’shiri to his slumber and slipped from the room.

  Downstairs, he found a few Lu’shun ladies in the parlor, frowning and gossiping while taking their tea.

  “Oh, it’s disgraceful, is what it is,” one with star-gray scales and a high collar said over her teacup.

  Lu’shun fashions struck Jathen as odd. The supposedly sexually liberated people of Beleskie dressed prudishly, with little skin showing, despite the warm sea air. However, there was a certain elegance and poise to all the ruffles and lace. Unaware of his presence in the hall, they continued preening and cooing like flustered doves.

  “How the same person can keep becoming so entangled in politics is beyond me.”

  “Well, it’s the spouses, is what it is. Have you noticed how there’s always a major election being held just after a new wedding or partnering? There’s some calculated seduction going on there, if you ask me.”

  “Let’s hope calculated is the least of it.”

  “I know what you mean. Did you hear about the roses planted in the new garden? They are just the most indecent shade of red.”

  “No!”

  By Spirit, it’s a nation of Thees! Jathen made his way to the dining room, where Hatori and Jephue were already in the throes of a new squabble. Ignoring them, Jathen took a seat and picked up a teacup. Blue flowers on white. I know I’ve seen a similar pattern before, but where?

  Jephue
raised his voice. “All I’m saying, Hatori, is I’d like some sort of timeline to gauge our stay here, for registration purposes. The elections are in the fall, and Spirit knows, I’d like to reestablish my residency so I can vote. You might not give a ruddy damn about such things as a foreigner, but it’s high time I get to have a say in what happens in my own government again.”

  “You had more say in what happened in the Tazu government by whispering in the old queen’s ear than you’ll ever obtain with a single measly vote in the Republic’s elections,” Hatori retorted.

  Alodie came in and poured some herbal tea into his empty cup then scuttled off to the parlor to serve the gossiping Lu’shun there.

  Jathen took a sip of the tea then asked Hatori, “What elections?”

  “For the senate’s seats,” Jephue responded as he fiddled with a napkin embroidered with more blue flowers. “A new party’s been gaining ground with a particularly well-spoken candidate I’m not entirely thrilled with. At least three are running against him, but I need to do a bit more research before I decide who I’m supporting.”

  Jathen blinked. “The Lu’shun pick their leaders?”

  “Yes.” Jephue rolled his eyes. “There are elections every few years, depending upon the position.”

  Jathen had always known the Lu’shun Republic’s government worked differently from the Tazu Nation. Indeed, all the western countries varied from the eastern monarchies, but the concept had never really been explained to him. “Does this system work better than the monarchies?”