Vergence (12 page)

When they were seated, the driver made a clucking sound, and the trikawi set off at a fast pace. The strength of the creature was incredible. It accelerated to a fast trot with ease, and even accounting for the lightness of the symor, Ebryn calculated they would need at least two horses to pull the same load at speed.

Sash sat squeezed between Ebryn and Addae, and wriggled constantly to get a better view of the passing city. If it had been anybody else sitting next to him Ebryn would have found the fidgeting annoying, but with Sash the excitement caught them all. She seemed to glow, reminding him of the expressions on the faces of the children in Conant village the one year he'd been there when the travelling fair arrived.

The symor wove between slower moving wagons and carriages, ranging freely across the breadth of the road. They passed through some openings with barely a finger's width clearance on either side and both he and Addae gripped the forward hand rail, flinching as they swept through seemingly impossible spaces. Neither the driver or Sash seemed at all concerned by the seemingly endless series of hazardous obstacles, and narrow gaps the roadway threw up in their path.

They followed the line of the terrace towards the centre of Vergence, but about a third of a mile along turned left, and crossed over a long bridge spanning the wide valley floor below. On the near side a rotund world-ship unfurled a vast rust-coloured sail with an audible crack and lurched ponderously into the air, but Ebryn's attention was drawn to the far edge of the valley. What he had taken to be the narrowly terraced sides of a steep rise proved, on closer inspection, to be a virtual cliff-face of dwellings piled one on top of the other.

The sheer scale of the structures dwarfed the senses. He barely had time to digest the monumental architecture before the symor plunged into a space between two rows of buildings — a gloomy artificial gorge filled with jostling traffic moving in both directions. They quickly turned down a side path and another, and within moments Ebryn had completely lost his sense of direction.

The layered sounds and odours of the city enveloped them. The noise reminded him of standing under the eaves of a forest as a storm raged around; an indistinguishable background roar filled in with a thousand sharper details closer at hand.

Between the tightly packed buildings the din reverberated, echoing from the walls and rolling back into the space between. But unlike his experience of the storm-racked Goresyn woods, which he'd found exhilarating, here he found the overlapping sounds disorientating.

The stink of the city in the confined space was almost worse than the noise. Fire smoke mingled uncompromisingly with the sour smell of cooking food competing for supremacy with the pungent aroma of animal dung.

All around, he felt as if thousands of eyes watched them pass, although he knew passers-by were simply going about their business. Ebryn sat back, and closed his eyes to shut out the assault on his senses. When he opened them again they were heading down a sloping lane.

The trikawi broke into a rapid canter, and the symor started to bounce alarmingly along the uneven stonework. Despite the ominous rasping of distressed metal and wood coming from the vehicle, their driver leant forward, making clicking noises with his tongue, attempting to spur it on to go even faster.

When Ebryn opened his eyes, they were in a broad avenue. At the far end two tall pillars bracketed the road, as if marking some kind of boundary. In front of each pillar stood a handful of guards in uniforms.

Beyond the pillars was a huge area, open to the sky, blanketed with rows of awnings and crammed to the point of overflowing. Hundreds of brightly coloured pennons fluttered overhead, attached to the ends of long poles.

Thousands of people crowded the space beneath, with a noise like the sound of a rushing of a water, growing louder as they approached. It took him a few seconds to realise that the noise came from the huge crowd, jostling and calling to each other beneath the market covers.

“Look at it, isn't it wonderful,” Sash said. “It's even greater than I thought it would be.”

Ebryn found he barely had time to look at anything for more than a moment before it was snatched away by the pressing crowd and the movement of the symor.

A ragged clothed man carrying a wooden bowl was shoved roughly away from the market by a guard using the blunt end of a spear.

Another dressed in long robes, with a shaven head and long straggling beard, clutched at a heavy tome like a drowning man. He screamed wild-eyed and incoherent exhortations at passers-by, flecks of white spittle flying at every other word.

The trikawi pulling them snapped irritably at the backs of a group of tall men in flat-topped brown felt hoods as they hurried out of the way. The closed expressions on the mens' olive-skinned faces yielded no hint of their thoughts.

A short way into the market they fell in behind a wagon, where the trikawi's fangs could no longer make an impression on the throngs blocking the road, and the symor slowed to a walking pace.

The overwhelming numbers, the welter of different styles and colours, seemed to crush Ebryn's senses. He felt insignificant in the face of such a heaving mass of people. On the other side of the symor he could see an expression of something like disbelief on Addae's face. Sash, however, seemed to be transported.

From all around them Ebryn could hear traders calling above the noise as they hawked their goods. At least, he thought, a few things stayed the same, regardless of where you were.

On his side of the vehicle a group of short tryth dressed in bright multicoloured clothing gambolled around an elevated platform. The crowd surrounding them whistled and laughed appreciatively as one of the small, toad-like entertainers tripped over a trailing ribbon and tumbled into a group of his fellows.

Ebryn watched them with interest, his first opportunity since the world-ship to see anvolene up close.

Master Spetimane had taught him the word volene, meaning “like us” in old Volanian. In the past, he'd said, the word anvolene had been used to describe those with six limbs, such as the cheg, but later it came to mean any group distinctly different to the Volanians.

The tryth were just over half the height of a typical man, with solid muscular bodies. Heavily folded mottled grey skin covered most of their bodies, and their heads looked like toads, with pointed ears, and broad mouths filled with sharp teeth.

“I want to stop and have a look,” Sash said, leaning forward, and speaking loudly to their driver.

The man shook his head. “We no stop here.”

Sash considered for a moment. “If you'll stop I'll pay you extra.”

“You pay three? We stop short short time.”

“Yes, that's fine,” Sash said.

The symor stopped and Ebryn clambered out, followed by Sash, but Addae remained in his seat.

“Don't you want to come and have a look?” Sash asked.

“I will wait here,” Addae said. “It would be wise to stay and guard your baggage.”

“Oh, that's good of you, if you don't mind,” Sash said. “I promise we won't be long. I just want a quick look.”

Sash pushed through gaps in the crowds, heading towards a set of awnings visible over the heads of the people around them.

“Addae's right,” she said, “we look like strangers here so we need to be on guard against pickpockets.”

“Pickpockets?”

“Thieves who steal from you as you pass them. In Senesella many of the tidal waspa are like that. If you turn your back on them for a moment they grab anything they can—”

“Do you mean the water people? In the Journeys of Ullvenard it says all the water dwellers of Senesella are noble.”

Sash gave him a quizzical look. “Some are noble, but more are tricksters and rogues. Even most of my friends are like that. There's no harm in them, it's just how they are.”

Ebryn digested this new view of Senesellan water dwellers as he and Sash moved between rows of stalls, working their way past knots of buyers. He'd half expected Sash to spend some time looking over the items on display, but she passed by with barely a glance to either side.

They stopped to watch as a small six limbed avolene shinned effortlessly up one of the swaying poles to attach a long grey ribbon near the top.

“What kind is that one?” Sash asked.

“Selerian, I think,” Ebryn said, recalling an illustration from one of his bestiaries. As the original image had given no clue about size he'd assumed they would be much larger, even as huge as a bear. This one must be somewhat less than half his height, he thought, and less than an eighth of his weight. Six small hands made easy work of the climb, the slim furry body with an extra pair of shoulders about halfway along, and a long flexible tail.

The climber spotted them staring, looking down on them with over-large eyes, from a long angular face. It bared pointed teeth, and flapped one of its lower arms in their direction, before sliding neatly out of sight.

Sash laughed. “Was he being rude to us?”

“Maybe, I don't know,” Ebryn said. He couldn't help smiling back at her.

Ebryn soon realised Sash moved purposefully, navigating them towards a rowdier section of the marketplace. Taller than most, Ebryn could see they'd arrived at an open area, packed with people all looking towards a raised platform, with long sheets of dark grey material, suspended from a frame, concealing each end.

Sash found a vantage point on an upturned crate, and they both watched.

A man dressed in brightly coloured clothes staggered across the platform, following a glowing goblet which floated through the air ahead of him. He clawed at it, but his hands passed through, his face carrying an expression of exaggerated anguish, his other hand clasped at his brow.

“Wicked is this cup which mocks me — yet before us it does ever flee.”

Hundreds of upturned faces were trained on the man as he lurched after the goblet. To Ebryn, it was clearly an illusory glamour, and he couldn't understand why it wasn't obvious to everyone. Nothing about the man or the onlookers made sense to Ebryn.

“What's he doing?” Ebryn asked.

Sash was watching, clearly transfixed by the spectacle. “Hmm?”

“Why's he following the cup?” Ebryn asked.

“And that, my good fellow, is the question,” a man behind them said in a booming voice. “If you want to find out, you will need to come and see the show.”

Sash and Ebryn turned to look at the speaker, a large man with broad fleshy features and ruddy cheeks, with a full beard of dark curling hair, dressed in bright flamboyant clothes. Around them, the crowd cheered as the man on the platform moved off to one side.

“Show?” Ebryn asked.

He grinned at them. “Dear me, that wasn't the full play, I can assure you. I know, as I wrote it myself. Teblin, master playwright and sometimes actor at your service.”

Ebryn remembered the time, a few years back, when a troupe of guisers passed through Conant village. Fidela had banned everyone living at Conant Manor from going to see their performance, calling them and their plays, peddlers of lies and half-truths. The image he'd formed, of hooded brigands skulking in shadows, whispering dark secrets to unsuspecting villagers, bore no semblance to the man in front of them.

“So what do we have here?” Teblin asked, looking them up and down. “A Senesellan princess, and a delightfully handsome young nobleman, fresh from …?”

“Fyrenar,” Ebryn said.

Sash laughed. “We don't have any princesses in Senesella. I'm Sashael, but my friends call me Sash, and this is Ebryn.”

“How do you know Sash is Senesellan?” Ebryn asked.

“She has all the markings, my dear fellow — all the markings — impossible to mistake. And newly arrived in this fine city, this close to the Tranquillity, I'd wager a gallon of ale you're here for the academy.”

“What is this Tranquillity?” Ebryn asked. He recalled Quentyn mentioning it earlier.

“Come over here, away from the crowd, and I'll explain it to you. You arrived as we finished — if you remain there you'll be trampled when my audience departs.”

Teblin led them through the jostling crowd, making for where a double row of covered stalls formed a kind of avenue.

“Yes, as I was saying,” Teblin said, stopping between a jewellery seller and a spice merchant, “the Tranquillity marks the start of the new year. Two weeks of celebrations—”

“Two weeks?” Ebryn said.

“Indeed, two weeks, and in that time we are by ourselves in this fine city. No ships ply the skies, crossing to the other places. We are unreachable from the outside, nor can we leave, and that is why it is styled the Tranquillity. Don't let the name put you off, though — I promise it is anything other than tranquil once the revelries start. Most of these fine fellows will pack up for the duration. Not much profit for them unless they're selling food and drink, especially drink.”

“Revelries?” Sash asked absently, her attention diverted by a stall-keeper trying to show her a collection of necklaces and rings.

“Parades and parties. An all too rare orgy of overindulgence, a brief respite in our laboured lives. Not the entire two weeks mind, even I couldn't manage that.”

“Oh, poor Addae,” Sash said suddenly. “I said we wouldn't be long. He must be wondering what's happened to us.”

“We left a friend waiting for us with our symor,” Ebryn said to Teblin.

“Then you must go,” Teblin said. “One should not keep a friend waiting. Where did you leave him?”

“Near a display with Tryth performers,” Ebryn said.

“Ah yes, I know it. As it happens, I was planning on going that way myself. I will walk with you. I'll have the pleasure of your company a while longer, and you will have the benefit of a guide.”

Ebryn looked round. He had no sense of where they were in the market, or which direction to take back to Addae. “Thanks, that's kind of you.”

“But wait — do you wish to buy some of that fine jewellery before we go?”

Sash laughed. “No need. I can wear as much as I like as often as I like — look.”

A dozen golden hoops pierced her ears, and a couple through either side of her nose. One eyelid hung low, weighted down by small hooked pendant with a brilliant blue stone to match the slide in her hair. Her fingers bulged with golden rings and she bowed under the burden of heavy necklaces and arm-bands.