Chapter 17

 

The wagon slowed and stopped soon after full darkness fell. When the door opened Rhia was eager to get out, but had to take her place behind everyone else while they filed down the steps.

Outside, the fat crescent of Greymoon hung bright and low in a clear sky. The wagons had parked side-by-side with a wide gap between them. She inhaled, trying to smell any difference in the skyland air, but found only an absence of smell, compared to the stink of warm, unwashed bodies she’d been immersed in.

Skykin moved around, some with lanterns, unhitching the beasts and fetching items from the luggage wagon. Rhia stuck close to the passenger wagon with the other shadowkin, though instead of facing into the space between the two wagons she looked the other way, out beyond the wagon, into the skyland.

The land glowed. Every enquirer who had travelled through the skyland had written of this and Rhia smiled to see it. The effect was, at first glance, no brighter than a night when both Moons were up: a silvery wash across the nighttime world. But while moonlight was constant and monochrome, the light beyond the wagon concentrated in certain areas – areas, Rhia now saw, where bushes, or amorphous clumps of what must be foliage, grew on the otherwise barren ground – and came in various shades of blue and purple and green; a soft baby-blue from that round clump, a turquoise wash on the patch of whatever-it-was over there. Some of the commonest plants were pale green cages of twisted stems which appeared, as far as scale could be gauged, to be around knee-height.

She turned at the sound of a throat being cleared to see Sorne looking her way. She nodded at him, then faced in like everyone else, ignoring the world at large. But even here there was life. On the bare earth by her feet was a regular patch of deeper shadow. She crouched down, squinting at the interlocking hexagons which covered an area the size of two hands side-by-side. Paving pads, according to Naturalist of Menb. Like many living things in the skyland, this was several creatures combined. Reminded of the apiaries at the family estate with their hexagonal cells, she came up with the analogy of a hive of bees where the hive itself was alive. This same pattern also existed on the largest scale, with the shadowlands themselves distributed in a hexagonal pattern around the widest part of the world. Not for the first time she wondered at the gaps in this pattern: the total of the five rows – three of twenty and two of twenty-one – should give one hundred and two shadowlands. Yet there were only eighty-seven.

Back on the local scale, this particular plant/animal was said to be one of the few skyland organisms it was safe to touch. Rhia pressed down gently. The pads felt like close-grained wood and exuded a faint gingery aroma.

She looked up as light flared. The skykin had lit a fire between the wagons. Loitering shadowkin wandered over to it, carrying folding stools like the one on her observation platform at home. Captain Sorne stood close by, not quite watching her.

She straightened, then looked up farther still. The sky was packed with stars, as many as she would see out in the estates. Not more though: as other enquirers had noted, whatever shaded the Sun by day in the shadowlands had no effect on the night sky. The stars were the same in skyland and shadowland.

She strode over to Sorne and gestured vaguely into the semi-darkness. “I need to, ah…”

He nodded and looked away. Rhia walked round the far side of the wagon. On the northern horizon loomed the dark, distant bulk of the Northern Divide; the mountains they must cross to reach Zekt.

Having checked she was unobserved, she crouched next to a wheel.

When she straightened she realized that she now faced west, with the Moon behind her. She had an excellent view of the sky from here. And, because she never let her satchel out of her sight, she had her sightglass with her.

She turned back to examine the wagon. The main structure was raised up to near head-height by its great wheels; how Father would have marvelled at the skill that went into building such a vehicle.

She ducked underneath, behind the nearest wheel, then got out her sightglass and rested it on one of the spokes. When she smelled something odd she stepped back, wondering if someone else had already used this space to relieve themselves. But this was not human waste, only a scent of ripe rot on the wheel itself, as though the wagon had run over something unpleasant. Careful not to touch the wheel, she stepped close again, and repositioned the sightglass.

Something gave a mournful hoot out in the lambent night. Rhia started, then shook her head. Whatever it was, it was not close. She looked through the sightglass. She had to slouch to bring her eye in line with the lens, but the view was rock-steady.

The bottom quarter of her vision was dark; the sightglass was shorter than the spoke was deep, so part of her field of view was blocked. Above this the stars in her vision shone bright. She smiled and moved the sightglass along the spoke a fraction, and found more stars. However, she had no idea which stars. In her eagerness she had looked without observing. She raised her eye from the lens and peered out at the sky between the spokes.

The constellation of the Burdened Traveller was dead ahead; the stars she had seen were in the figure’s upper chest. That strange, hazy area near the head had always intrigued her. She moved the sightglass up a spoke. In order to line it up with her target she would have to support it with one hand against the steeper angle this spoke lay at. On her return to Shen she must get a proper stand made, some sort of tripod perhaps.

When she looked through the sightglass the fuzziness on the celestial figure’s brow sharpened into focus. Rhia was stunned. She expected to catch one or two additional stars through the sightglass, yet here were a dozen distinct points! Some stars were embedded in the haze, while others shone clear through it. She could make out colours too: hints of pink and gold amidst the overall pale blue glow.

Rhia chuckled. The sky was no immutable tableau, as priests and commoners believed. It was a living vision of infinite wonder!

“Hello?”

Rhia jumped, then saw a dark figure standing off to the left of the wagon.

“Captain Sorne.”

“Are you all right under there?”

“Yes. Yes, I’m fine.”

“You’ve been gone some time.”

“I said I’m fine.” But the militiaman was only trying to protect her. There would be other nights. “I’ll come back now.”

At the fireside the shadowkin had settled near the passenger wagon while the skykin kept to the far side of the fire. Despite the division both races appeared relaxed. Some of the shadowkin were playing dice or knucklebones. As Rhia settled on the dusty ground, one of the boys produced a wooden whistle and began to play. People clapped or beat time on their legs. The skykin looked on, impassive.

When the shadowkin woman got up to dance, Rhia tried not to stare. One never saw stamping feet and swirling skirts like that at court! The woman sat down again when a pair of skykin came forward to ladle stew out of a pot nestling in the fire. The skykin worked efficiently but with no obvious direction. Did they have a leader? One of them was looking across the fire while the others organized the meal. Was looking, in fact, straight at her. Rhia returned the shameless regard.

“Um, did you want this?”

She took the bowl Breen passed her. The stew was pale and starchy, based on white tubers and something beige and mushroom-like, but surprisingly tasty. She had read somewhere that skykin did not eat meat.

As the shadowkin were passing their empty bowls back to the skykin, one of the Shenese traders came over to talk to the woman. After a short discussion overseen by the woman’s mousy companion, the pair walked off. They went behind the skykin, who ignored them, and into the luggage wagon. Well, that confirms my suspicions about how she earns her living.

Some of the skykin were bedding down for the night, wrapped tight in cloaks. Rhia wished she had thought to fetch her own cloak from the luggage wagon before it was put to its current use. Having no alternative, she hugged her knees for warmth and stared into the fire. She had not sat like this since childhood. It was oddly comforting.

“M’lady?”

She started at Sorne’s whisper. Despite the cold night air and hard ground, she had been dozing, lulled by the firelight.

“I have news.”

About a third of the traders had retired to the passenger wagon. There were no strangers in earshot.

“Yes, Captain?”

“The way-trader I dealt with back in the umbral confirmed that a young lad matching your brother’s description and travelling alone passed through a few months back.”

“And how did he seem to them?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

Had he been hurt on the road? Was he distressed? Did he have an air of guilt about him? But Sorne could hardly have interrogated his source; he would have had to pretend to be making a casual enquiry. She settled on, “Just… was he well?”

“The trader didn’t mention any injury or malady.”

“Thank you, Captain. That’s good news.” Not really news at all, but she did not want to appear ungrateful.