Vergence (16 page)

They arrived at the first Claw road much sooner than he'd expected, but Ebryn found it hard not to be disappointed. He wasn't sure what he'd imagined it would be like, but the street looked much like any of half a dozen others he'd seen since arriving, almost empty apart from a couple of cloaked figures ambling along with books clutched under their arms.

It was narrower than he'd thought too, crowded on both sides with tall, worn looking buildings. Most were built from honey hued stone, discoloured by time, and ingrained with dirt. A few leant outward, over the street, as if bending forward with age, trailing creepers like overgrown beards.

“Look,” Sash said. “I told you I could find the way. Should we see what the others are like?”

She led them straight across the road without waiting for an answer, to a lane in a gap between the buildings opposite.

A short way further on the lane angled left, joining the second of the Claws roads facing downhill towards the outer part of the city. This road, much busier than the first, had groups of people dressed in shades of brown, beige and blue, who moved purposefully along the street, entering and leaving buildings. Ebryn wondered if the colours had some meaning, perhaps denoting rank, but he felt he'd already displayed too much ignorance in front of his new friends, and didn't want to ask.

A couple of hundred yards down the road a two-wide column of men, dressed in red, marched across the street, from a building on one side, to an entrance on the other, heedless of others trying to pass.

Elouphe, facing in the other direction, hadn't noticed. “What they do, Sash?”

“I don't know,” Sash said, turning. “Let's go and find out, shall we?”

A short way up their side of the road stood a queue of people, waiting in front of the double doors to a large red-brick building. A yellow cloaked woman made her way down the line, talking to each in turn. As they approached, the woman drew an elderly man from the queue and helped him towards the door.

“Wait,” Jure said, holding out an arm to block their path. “Is that the pox on that one's face? I'm not going near that.”

“I think Jure's right, I don't think it's safe,” Ebryn said. Now they were closer he could see most of the people waiting outside the building looked sick.

“What pox?” Elouphe asked.

“An illness. You get it by breathing the vapours of people who are already sick with the pox.”

Sash snorted and pushed past Jure. “I'm sure I won't catch anything just talking. You can stay here if you want.”

She stopped next to a woman, holding a young child, at the end of the line.

“There was plague in Brulle, where I lived before I came here,” Jure said to Elouphe. “There were thousands died from it. To start, when they were ill, they were like the people here, covered all over in pox marks.”

“What about you? How did you avoid getting it?” Ebryn asked.

“Master Gasange got called away, doing some business. I was helping him. When we came back it was nearly all over save burying the dead. There were some furbeg blamed for it after, seeing as it didn't do any of them harm. There was trouble after, but we stayed out of it.”

“Trouble?”

Jure looked down, pursing his lips and shuffling his feet. “Driven out mostly. A few were killed. Furbeg I mean.”

While Sash talked to the woman, Addae peeled off from their group, walking past the front of the line, and into the building. A few moments later he returned through the doorway, a scowl twisting his features.

“Do not go into this place, there is one who is T'chkt here,” he said.

“A what?” Jure asked, trying to peer passed the crowd near the door to see inside.

“One who is T'chkt. These are the deadly enemy of my people.”

“This one can't be,” Sash said, rejoining them. “This is the home of the healers' chapter. That's what these people are waiting for, to see a healer.”

“You do not understand, Sashael. Each T'chkt is the enemy of my people.”

“Oh, I think I do understand you. How would you like it if people hated you because you come from Epitu? You really can't judge every single person just by where they come from, Addae.”

Addae frowned at Sash. “This is why I do not like the T'chkt Sashael. The T'chkt, and my own people — each is from Epitu. This is the reason we fight—”

Sash made an impatient noise. “And if they weren't from Epitu?”

“All T'chkt are of Epitu.”

“Well, this one can't want to fight your people if he's here.”

Addae glared at her. “I will not speak to you, Sashael.” He made a clicking sound with his tongue and turned away. “You do not know Epitu. I will not listen to you.”

Sash stood with her hands on her hips, frowning after him, until he turned a corner.

Elouphe settled back on his haunches, his head weaving between Addae's receding back and Sash. “Why Addi go, Sash?”

“Because he can't see he's being unreasonable, that's why.”

Test Day

W
HEN THE DAY
for the test arrived there was an unmistakable feeling of tension amongst their small group. They gathered on one of the quieter upper balconies for breakfast, as they had done on most mornings of their stay, but there was a distinct lack of appetite at the table. After a few half-hearted mouthfuls of warmed oatmeal and syrup, Sash pushed her bowl away and stood up saying she needed to make a final check on their transport arrangements.

Only Addae seemed unaffected. He finished off his own breakfast of small white hard-boiled eggs with a pile of thin crispy wafers, and a bright yellow sauce, before moving on to Sash's leftovers. Addae had donned the same elaborate multi-coloured robes and headgear he'd worn on the night of Captain Lim's banquet.

Ebryn and Addae ended up sharing a symor driven by a cheerfully energetic man of middle years. They sat behind him, watching the light reflecting off his shiny scalp as he chatted amiably while navigating the street traffic. All of the two-wheeled symors arriving to transport them had been drawn by the same strange gaunt leathery skinned creatures as the one which had nearly snapped his fingers off a few days earlier.

Ebryn leant forward as the driver paused in his description of the Duca's palace to negotiate a difficult corner. “What kind of creature is this you have pulling us?”

He asked partly from curiosity, partly to divert his thoughts from the looming test.

“Ah, young sir, I could see at once you are a man of enquiry and learning. This immensely fine beast you see before you is a trikawi.”

“Do you mind me asking why you don't use a horse?”

“A very wise question, if I may say. You see this trikawi here has a number of virtues over and above your average horse,” the driver said, goading his trikawi into a fast trot with flicks of the traces. “Wonderful animals, horses, I'll give you that, but the trikawi is stronger and it runs for longer. And they can eat nearly anything, see — which is kinder here, where good fodder can be hard to come by sometimes. Too many horses and the price for their food goes up, then only the rich can afford it, and a half-starved horse is little use for pulling one of these.”

“They're not Volanian are they? Where are they from?” Ebryn asked.

“You're right, young sir, trikawi are from Kurbezh. Least that's where they started out — I'm reckoning they must be everywhere nowadays.”

Ebryn sat back in his seat. He couldn't recall reading anything about Kurbezh in any of his books.

Inside the loop road the character of the buildings changed abruptly. Cramped streets, lanes and alleyways criss-crossing each other along elevated platforms and bridges, or running through tunnels and between tall layered buildings that seemed to have been built arbitrarily like vast tangled organic accretions, gave way to neatly laid out broad tree-lined avenues, each straddling a central canal, and open to the sky.

Many of the structures they passed were set back from the thoroughfares, unreachable through walls or high wrought iron railings, encapsulated within elegant defences or gardens, and separated by small public parks. The architecture reminded Ebryn of Lord Conant's manor house, solidly constructed from dressed stone, but here designed with an eye for grandeur as much as practicality.

“Much quicker this way,” their driver said. “Could have followed the loop round, but it'll be busier today and I don't expect you sirs want to be later than you have to be.”

“Driver, do you know who it is living within such great dwellings as these?” Addae asked.

“A fine question, and to be honest, sir, I couldn't say who lives in this one or that, but I reckon it'll be the old families, guild masters and the like.”

They turned left at every other crossroad and soon entered an area of narrower lanes between older ruddy brown buildings festooned with gargoyles and statues of impossibly strange animals peering through gaps in the thickly matted creeper which embraced the façades like a parasitic skin.

The driver reigned in his trikawi, slowing the symor to the pace of a fast walk. “Young sirs — we are nearing your destination, as you can see by the red brick. It is said this is the oldest part of the city.”

Ebryn's mouth felt suddenly dry, and his stomach twisted around his sparse breakfast. Until this moment the rambling conversation with the driver had kept his mind away from the test, and worse, the implications of failure. The thought of returning to the Conant estate now, after just a few days, was unbearable. He looked at Addae, wondering how he could be so calm before something so important.

“This'll be where sirs are wanting to alight,” the driver said as they turned through an open archway into a large gravel surfaced courtyard surrounded on three sides by a single colonnaded building.

Two symor were already there, setting down passengers, and Ebryn spotted the end of Elouphe's tail disappearing through a large arched doorway in the central section of the building.

Aara climbed from the symor before them, walking slowly up the steps, to where Sash stood waiting for them.

Sash had been cool towards Addae since their disagreement outside the healers' chapter, but now she smiled at them both. Any nervousness she'd had that morning seemed to have gone. Perhaps she'd felt worse waiting.

Through the great double door they found themselves in a large entrance hall with a high vaulted ceiling. Huge arched windows of clear crystal glass filled the upper third of each side of the room, allowing plenty of light into what might otherwise have been a sombre space.

The floors were tiled, the walls panelled with the same heavily polished dark brown wood. Contorted faces, carved into every patch of exposed stone, glared down at them from above, and on all sides busts made of stained and pitted metal stared at them with blank eyes from shallow recesses. Broad archways opened through the centre of each of the other three sides of the room.

As many as two dozen who had arrived ahead of them stood in small groups talking in subdued tones. At the far side of the hall Ebryn recognised the sinuous neck of the Muruon from Captain Lim's banquet peering through the archway.

Just inside they were accosted by a jowly man in ink-stained cream coloured robes carrying a length of parchment and a stylus.

“I'm recorder Morne,” he said. “I need your names. When it is your turn, recorder Ligen will take you through.”

He took each of their names in turn and marked his list, tracking painstakingly from the beginning each time with his forehead crunched up in concentration. It didn't help Ebryn's nerves to discover his name was last on the list.

“Does it matter where your name is written?” Ebryn asked.

“It's your order for being called,” Morne said.

When he reached Elouphe, Morne traced his stylus to the bottom of the list. “Whatcha say your name is again, I can't see it on here?”

Elouphe retreated a pace blinking rapidly, and swallowing.

“No, there he is,” Sash said, reading the list over the man shoulder. “Aluf. That must be it.”

“Aluf?” the recorder said looking at Elouphe doubtfully. “Sounds Haeldran to me. You don't look Haeldran.”

He marked Elouphe's name and turned to Aara. “What's yours then?”