Neveryóna: Or, the Tale of Signs and Cities

by Samuel R. Delany

  ‘And we fell off the cliff again.’ The old gentleman’s eyes blinked above wet cheeks. (Was it raining harder?) ‘No, my parents agreed, this time in accord, I could not do it again. My father paid with both gold and iron, so it must have been rather expensive, even for those days. And I played at dragons and dragon riders all the way to the aunt’s brother-in-law’s niece’s where we were being hosted for lunch; and where I charmed some of the guests—and bored some others, I’m sure—with my loud version of dragon riding, till one of the servants took me with five or six other children down to the lake by the fountain. After we paddled about a bit, a slave brought our lunch out in several ceramic bowls, one of which had a dragon painted on it—I’m afraid it only got me going again.’ He sighed, smiling. ‘And that’s practically all I remember of the entire Ellamon trip!’

  After moments Pryn said: ‘My dragon was a wild one. I caught her myself.’

  ‘Of course you’re much older than I was,’ the gentleman said.

  Pryn said: ‘I don’t think they have the dragon ride anymore. For children.’ She looked at her mug. ‘The dragon corrals still put on exhibitions for people who come up to see. But some of the corrals have been closed down—they tore down the biggest when I was nine. My cousin was on the work crew…but the rest still put on shows.’ She blinked because of a drop of water on her eyelash. There’re not so many dragons anymore.’

  ‘Never a hearty breed,’ the gentleman said. ‘They’ll probably be extinct in a hundred years. That’s why they were put under Imperial Protection.’

  ‘My aunt said something once about there being a children’s dragon ride, a long time ago. But they…closed it down. Before I was born.’

  ‘This was certainly before you were born!’ The gentleman turned to pick up his mug. ‘Forty years ago, at least—fifty years ago. More than fifty years ago!’ He shook his head. ‘I am getting on. We are getting on, aren’t we Bruka?’

  Just then the rain doubled, and—in the next breath—tripled.

  On the bench ahead Murjus looked at the sky with a whiny grunt.

  The gentleman stood, pulling his cloak first over one shoulder, then over the other. ‘We’d better be going inside.’

  Pryn walked with him between stapled benches, gone dark and shiny with rain, back toward the building. The slaves hunched further over their bowls, spooning faster at their stew. The rim of the gentleman’s empty mug appeared and disappeared from under his cloak’s edge. The roof stuck out enough to give them some protection. He moved in front. She followed on the strip of drier ground, her inner shoulder bumping the wall, watching drops stand on the deep nap of his outer.

  ‘That slave drank all your beer,’ Pryn said. ‘She was a greedy creature.’

  ‘I was looking forward to a last mouthful before I went in, yes.’ He glanced back, smiling (so Pryn stepped up beside him). ‘But slaves grow thirsty too.’

  ‘Would you like some of mine?’

  A bushy eyebrow rose. He looked at Pryn, at his own mug, at hers again, at his own. ‘Eh…no. Thank you, no.’ He stepped ahead at the door, and pushed back wet hide.

  Pryn stepped in behind him.

  She watched him walk through the hall, water dripping and gleaming from the dark embroideries. Making her own way to the counter, she climbed to the stool.

  The gentleman had stopped to speak to three barbarian workers—and in their own language, too, just as clearly as he had been speaking with Pryn in hers. Yrnik knew a few barbarian phrases that he could shout to get the workers to move faster. And Tetya had told her some words you were not supposed to say—which barbarians said all the time. But now, with both that man’s hands on his blue-black shoulders, now with his own hand on the shoulder of that one, the gentleman seemed a kind of magnificent little barbarian himself. Pryn sipped her beer (was it watery from the rain?) and watched two women nervously wait behind some men—to present their five children to him, Pryn realized. Days ago, indeed, one of those little girls had been made to return a peach Pryn had given her, which had bothered Pryn a while, before she realized the kinds of separations that existed about her. She put her elbow behind her and leaned back on the counter. ‘Juni…?’

  With the hem of her apron around her forefinger, Juni was rubbing at a spot of spilled food which had escaped the general wiping and dried to the wood.

  ‘…who is that?’

  Juni looked up and opened her mouth. ‘Why, it’s the earl!’ She leaned closer to touch Pryn’s arm. ‘Didn’t you see the caravan that went by here a while ago?’

  ‘That was his?’

  ‘No,’ explained Juni. ‘That was his visitors! But now he’s finished entertaining his friends from the north, he can come along here and pay us a visit.’ She laughed. ‘Look at him there! You know, he’s a great magician. So if you look at him, don’t look at him wrong!’

  Pryn frowned.

  ‘Oh, it’s true!’ Juni went again to picking at the food spot, this time with a fingernail. ‘Now I’ve never seen any of his magic, but I’ve heard tell! And I’m telling you what I’ve heard. Ah—’ and she tapped Pryn’s arm again. ‘Look there!’

  Pryn turned.

  Hide swung back from the door again. Old Rorkar came through, some new laborers behind him, toward the serving area.

  The morning he’d hired her, Old Rorkar’s broad, knobby feet had been bound in broad leather sandals. Since then, however, Pryn had not seen the peasant brewer in any kind of shoe. Behind the counter the cook, Cyka, saw them coming, jammed her flat wooden spoon into the stew crock, turned to the counter, and planted both hands on brown, wide-splayed fingers. It was her most frequent gesture, and whenever she did it, Pryn thought of some farm woman snatching two root clusters from the earth and flopping them down on a rock for view. Cyka grinned over teeth ice-gray and perfect.

  ‘…not find it like those city jobs you’re heading to, where you can wander in at any hour of the morning or afternoon. Lateness won’t be tolerated.’ Old Rorkar slapped his own small, hard hand on the wood. ‘Cyka, these are some new men. This is Kudyuk.’ With a patriarchal arm around towering Kudyuk’s shoulder, Rorkar moved him forward.

  ‘Kudyuk,’ Cyka repeated with a nod, turned to take a dish from a pile of dishes, and ladled into it a flat of stew. She placed it in the hands of the tall, hairy-armed barbarian.

  ‘And this is Zaiky.’ Another arm around the shoulder.

  ‘Zaiky.’ Another nod; another stew bowl.

  Juni came up beside Cyka to deal out wooden eating spoons, which the laborers picked up.

  ‘This is har’Leluk,’ Another shouldered arm.

  ‘Leluk…har’Leluk.’ A nod; a bowl.

  Leluk was a woman—and har,’ Pryn had just learned, was a barbarian term meaning ‘radiant’ when it preceded a woman’s name; otherwise it was a general intensifier, like ‘very’ or ‘terribly’ or, indeed, ‘radiantly,’ when it sounded, as it frequently did, in general converse.

  ‘This is Donix.’

  ‘Donix.’ More stew.

  A week back, Pryn had been presented to Cyka in the same way, with the same arm, the same nod and bowl. Once you were presented as a worker at the brewery by the owner, Cyka would give you a bowl and a mug every evening thereafter—though the mug came only after the first full day’s work. Rorkar, they said, remembered each worker’s name long enough to get from the hiring table to Cyka; and Cyka remembered it through all eternity. At least three times Pryn had seen her refuse food to a man who’d been fired a few weeks before but who had tried to come back and sneak a free meal.

  ‘And this is Jarced.’

  ‘Jarced,’ who got his arm from Rorkar, his bowl from Cyka, and his spoon from Juni.

  Finished serving, Cyka put her hands on the counter and nodded beyond Rorkar’s shoulder.

  ‘Eh…yes, Cyka? What is it?’

  Cyka gestured with her bristly chin.

  ‘Eh…what?’

  Rorkar looked back, turned.

  At that
moment the earl left the group with which he’d been speaking and started up between the tables, much the way he had walked among the benches, with that luminous smile.

  Old Rorkar took on a look of repressed excitement that made Pryn see a little of his nephew across that wide forehead, under those bushy brows, and in the prominent jaw and unevenly bearded cheek. ‘My lord!’ Rorkar raised the back of his right fist to this forehead.

  On either side of the approaching earl, men and women were rising. ‘Rorkar, my man!’ Reaching the peasant brewer, the earl gently pulled the wrinkled wrist away from the high forehead, bald as his own. ‘Now, now, I’ve told you many times: such gestures are unseemly within the walls of your own place of business, Rorkar. Save them for those public occasions when both of us are equally bound by the constraints of ritual.’

  ‘And I have told you equally many times, my lord: I do not forget that this was not always my business, but belongs to me only by the generosity of your late and noble father—all Nevèrÿon is the poorer for his passing.’

  ‘Yes, yes, you’ve been saying that for twenty years! And I notice another year has gone by where you have not taken my advice—a lusty peasant like you should find himself a young wife to get him a son as an heir to take over in his old age.’

  ‘And I have told you, my lord: wives are not for me. I am married to the brewery here.’

  ‘And I have told you: if it’s your waning powers that worry you, my man, I have ways…’ The earl raised a finger and lowered a brow, which made some onlookers laugh and others draw in breath.

  ‘My lord, my hopes are—still—all in my nephew, Tetya. Tetya?’ Rorkar looked about the hall. ‘Tetya, are you here? Come, pay your respects to his Lordship!’

  Grinning, Tetya pushed up, all elbows and ears.

  ‘Why, Tetya, you’ve grown a head since I saw you last!’ the earl cried. ‘It lets me know how long it’s been since I last visited!’

  ‘My lord!’ Tetya blurted, smacking his fist’s back to his forehead. ‘It’s only been three or four months since you were here!’

  ‘And I didn’t see you that time because you were away at your cousin’s—did I see you just when you got back? Anyway, you’ve shot up like a sapling!’

  ‘My lord,’ Rorkar said, ‘we’ve made some changes since you last came. I’ve hired someone to teach Tetya to write. A young woman from the north…?’Rorkar looked about. Catching sight of Pryn, he beckoned her over.

  Pryn got down from her stool.

  ‘This is Pryn.’ Rorkar’s arm fell about Pryn’s shoulder.

  Imitating Tetya and Rorkar, she raised the back of her first to her forehead. ‘My lord…’

  ‘Ah, yes. I’ve already met this remarkable young woman.’ The earl folded his hands, the mug still hanging on his forefinger. ‘Well! Not only do you ride dragons, you can write! And read, I presume?’

  Arm still about her, Old Rorkar called to some general audience that seemed to be just beyond the actual onlookers, ‘You see! You see! He’s already met her! Nothing escapes his Lordship!’

  ‘What system do you read and write by?’

  Pryn was not sure what he meant. ‘The one they use from Kolhari to Ellamon—so that you can speak the words written. It uses larger characters to begin people’s names…?’ She wondered if she were differentiating it enough; and, if so, from what.

  ‘Ah, yes. The syllables that came from the Ulvayn Islands about fifteen years back. I gather they’re now the most popular system throughout Nevèrÿon. Would you believe, among the six or seven systems I’ve mastered from time to time, it’s not among them!’ He laughed. ‘Well, you are an exceptional young woman! I should like to invite you to my home. My wife and I would be happy to receive you for dinner. Perhaps tomorrow evening…about five o’clock?’ The earl lowered his chin; his glance took in Rorkar, who made some gesture that seemed to say both ‘of course’ and ‘it’s nothing.’ Only seconds later Pryn realized the invitation meant she must miss the last hour’s work. ‘Good, then. I shall send a carriage for you at four-thirty—No!’ The earl’s free hand rose from his cloak. ‘Don’t protest!’ (Pryn had not thought of protesting.) ‘Come as you are. It will be an informal evening. Wear one piece of jewelry, one bit of gold or jade more than that bronze pendant you have on now, and we shall consider you frightfully overdressed. I shall be wearing exactly what I wear now. I shall expect you to do the same.’

  Pryn, who had no jade or gold to wear, became aware in one instant of three things: relief from an anxiety she had not even realized she felt until it vanished. Also, everyone around her, including Tetya and Rorkar, had been holding their breaths; she knew, when they all started to breathe. Finally, the astrolabe, which she had never thought of as jewelry, suddenly seemed a notable weight, worthy of mention, if only because the earl had mentioned it. ‘Yes, my lord.’ Her aunt would have wanted her to add, and so she added, ‘Thank you, my lord.’ Then, as an afterthought, she clapped the back of her fist to her forehead again.

  The earl pulled his cape about him and looked at Tetya. ‘My respects to your family.’ He turned to Rorkar. ‘My best wishes for your nephew’s continued progress.’ Without waiting for a response from either, he turned and walked toward the door.

  ‘Well!’ Old Rorkar dropped his arm from Pryn’s shoulder. ‘Well…you…er…really, I think it’s very fine of the earl to invite you. It’s fine with me. Really, it’s fine. And why don’t you come up to my place this evening. I mean later. Not for dinner. You’ve already had dinner, haven’t you? Here?’

  ‘Yes, she has,’ was Cyka’s oblique interjection.

  ‘Good. Come by the house for…for a late mug of beer, then. Tetya will be there. Yes, do come by. As informally as you would go…to his Lordship’s. Yes!’ Rorkar let out a laugh that seemed as perceptively unsure as the earl’s smile had seemed obliviously confident. ‘In an hour: you and Tetya. Of course you will, won’t you?’

  Having first taken Rorkar’s words as an order, Pryn now began to hear their entreaty. As she said, ‘Yes, sir,’ she wondered if the proper thing to do were again to touch her fist against her forehead.

  The earl reached the hide.

  The hide swung back.

  The earl stepped back.

  Yrnik stepped in—and punched himself in the head! (That’s how it looked to Pryn.) He started to move aside, then remembered and grabbed the hide back for his Lordship. The marvelous cloak sailed up and after its colored hem—and was gone. The hide fell. Yrnik’s fist opened and his fingers turned on his forehead to scratch his nappy head. Blinking in the doorway, Yrnik looked about the hall.