New Decameron Three: Rosemary Kirstein (Patreon)

THE CITY IN THE CRAGS

(Volume 6 of the Steerswoman Series)

by Rosemary Kirstein

CHAPTER ONE

It was raining sideways again.

The wind from the Long Gap was pulling from somewhere ephemeral mists, coalescing to banners and rags all around, and above and below, and beyond. The vendor had wisely erected her stand with its back down the Gap, and she tented her dark old oilskins wide to each side, protecting her wares. Her unhappy customer, face to the rain, was new to the city, and had not the sense yet to stand with the vendor's own body shielding the weather. She was blinking and wiping, over and over, with weary resignation.

And taking her time, as well. "They're the best to be had," the vendor prompted. "I can assure you, none better found, neither up high nor down low."

"I can't fault them for detail..."

"Fault! Fault, do you say, now? What an affront! Even to think it, that I would mislead a newling such as yourself!"

A glance from the customer, both wary and disparaging. The ploy had failed. She would not attempt to assuage the insult by offering higher payment.  

The customer reached up and pushed back her hair: sun-yellowed hair, now in dark rain-wet strings and strands all down her forehead. She was neither tall nor short, and seemed sturdy enough; most visitors here would be red-faced and puffing so far up the side of the city. Her green wool cloak, belted in through the armholes, was too long, and too loose -- against both fashion and sense. Flatlander clothing.

"Here, Jumi!" The vendor called out past the customer. "Don't hang from the rail, you'll be falling for days! Do you want me clambering down in the springtime to collect your sad little bones?" The customer looked back at the child's nimble antics with jaw-dropped astonishment and distress. She seemed ready to dash off and rescue him. The vendor felt sorry for her. "No, no -- no need to worry. You'd think that one had apprenticed himself to the wood-gnomes. I merely scold to express my love. Now, if you'll just tell where it is that you're going, I can help you to choose, with a proper regard for a newling's shallow pocket."

The newling paused so long that the vendor wondered if she knew where she wanted to go at all. "Well... I'll certainly need one for this side," the woman said. "And all the way up... Also, the second gap off the Long Gap -- what is that called?"

"Kin's Hole?" The vendor opened a flat box and riffled through the contents. "Little demand for that one. But if glassware's your want, it all drops to the docks and then rises to market at Brauer's Landing. It's no cheaper had up the Hole. And the same to be said of embroidery."

"Kin's Hole, definitely." The woman seemed suddenly stubborn, and not inclined to explain.

The vendor shrugged. "It's your own coin... here. I'll let you have that one for three little coppers. Small demand, as I said." The newling took the map. "And Southside... this one will take you to Pylon Three. And this... here, from Pylon Three all the way to the top. If you're planning to gawk at the wizard's keep, stay back of the ropes. That can't be said enough: Stay back of the ropes! Abremio's magics have no soul, and can't tell if your purpose is mischief, malice, or merely the retrieval of a dropped sausage. A smaller silver for these two." The newling hesitated, winced, and paid out. The vendor dropped the coins into her purse. "Now, what else might you need? Maps and toll-tokens are all that I sell, but if you've a lack, I'll be glad to advise you on where satisfaction might lie."

The newling played wise. "For a fee, I presume?"

"But how could it be different? I've children to feed, and a spouse who plays viol. He's home all off-season with no source of coin -- oh, but what a droll noise as he practices runs! The children can hardly keep toes from tapping; they have to take turns, else the whole house would drop." The newling delivered a gaze of suspicion. The vendor assured her, with gruesome pleasure: "I've seen such things happen, it’s always a danger!"

A hint of admonishment colored the gaze; the vendor now found herself needing add: “No, I did see it happen.” That look - disappointment? “Only once, I admit. And the house was an old one, already in shambles. Condemned, in fact, yes... And the site of an illegal, unlicensed party...”

With a tilt of the head and the slightest of smiles, the newling accepted the tale’s truer version.

#

It came to Rowan, as she made her way up the next set of stairs, that she really ought to alter her demeanor somehow.  

Apparently, it was not enough merely to leave off her Steerswoman’s identifying ring and chain -- something about her still communicated authority, or an expectation of truth. At the very least, she should learn to feign credulity.

Unfortunately, she had no idea how to accomplish this.

And all around her, as she rose in mist and drizzling rain, the city of The Crags hinted its shape, smelling of iron, broken rock, and wet wood.   

She clutched her cloak closer, better understanding the Crags fashion for fitted coats. That woman descending toward her, for instance: a bearskin coat, sleeves to the fingertips, and hem reaching just below the knees, thus preventing its owner from dragging the hem on the stair as she went down, or from stepping on it while climbing. The woman's boots were high, laced, and very good quality.  

Rowan nodded politely as she and the other came abreast; the woman ignored her completely. Rowan was bemused. Certainly, in a city, one could not generally acknowledge every single random passer-by, but there was no one on the landing but they two. The steerswoman suspected herself consigned to a separate, probably lower, class.

She looked up. The next landing was visible, and the next set of stairs. Above that, all was lost in the shifting mist. Below, the fur-coated woman had reached the landing where the vendor still stood, but past this, the fog took over again. Somewhere far below were the first landings, the wharves, the harbor.  

Rowan gathered up the hem of her cloak and continued. The map-vendor was no fool, standing out in this weather; it was in exactly this sort of situation that visitors to the city would be most likely to get lost, need to identify where in the Crags the landing they stood on was located, how many sets of steps to climb or descend to their destinations.  

At the top of the next set, the landing was wide, almost a boulevard with mist at the far end and two ranks of tall stone houses on the left. Rowan had reached a "flat", as the broader ledges were locally called, and this portion of the city looked almost normal -- if one could ignore the sheer drop past the railing on the right. All the houses had glass in the windows, lovely and clean in the rain. Wealthy residences, Rowan thought -- then corrected herself. The Crags had glass to spare.

As Rowan approached the next stair-set, something grew dimly visible beyond. Like a child's attempt at a drawing of a tower, made only of black lines, its top lost in fog...  

Pylon Two. Rowan had some distance left to climb. The rain turned to sleet.

Ascending, she became aware of a low musical hum. Motion up above, making the mist stir like smoke. Rowan struggled between two urges: one, the steerswoman's hunger to observe; the other, a shameful and apparently instinctive desire to cower like a rabbit. She suppressed the second urge, but was rewarded with only a great, eerie shadow that passed overhead, moving near-silently from Pylon Two up toward Three.

The sleet was coming in pellets now, hard and wet. Rowan's face was damp and cold, her body dank inside her cloak. She stumbled once, from weariness.

The next landing merged into a flat with a collection of small buildings: old stone ones backed against bare rock, newer wooden ones crowding the inner edge of the planking. One shabby structure, a motley of bright new and grayed old bamboo with a tin roof, emitted steam from each crack; and this decided Rowan. This, and the sign swinging above the door: The Trembling Man.  

She wanted warmth and a brief rest. The name of the establishment was not reassuring, but it seemed a tavern; and a tavern is a tavern, all across the world.

But inside, it was no tavern after all. Still, it was warm and dry, despite possessing no visible hearth. Rowan paused in the doorway to shake the wet from her cloak before entering, closed the door behind her, and surveyed the interior.

A single room, with no adornment whatsoever. The tables were long and narrow, ranked with an almost military precision one behind another, back and across the small space. The patrons were scattered about, each solitary, each seated on only one side of the tables, all facing the door and Rowan. Everyone seemed to be drinking something from a steaming mug, and the steerswoman decided that whatever it was, she wanted some.  

A fantastically ancient man was perched on a tall chair behind a tall counter to Rowan's left. Over his head, the low ceiling bristled with a multitude of hooks, from which hung many large mugs, all of different design.  

Rowan approached the man. "What do you serve?"

He raised shaggy eyebrows in surprise. "It's tea at the Trembling Man, at all and every time of the day. Strong tea in the morning to wake you to work, sweet tea in the noontide to comfort your labors, herb tea in the evenings to quell your sad dreams."

"And in between those times?"

"Whatever remains of the previous brew."

Rowan paid over a small copper, and the serving-man opened a cupboard door, behind which stood a huge green-glass urn. No fire was visible, but a waft of heat emerged. The server drew from a spigot at the bottom and passed Rowan the mug, which he told her could be filled once more, for free.

Rowan turned to select a seat but paused, bemused by the seating arrangement. Every customer faced directly to the front. No one conversed, nor played at cards, nor dozed, nor even engaged in idle daydreams, as near as the steerswoman could tell. They hunched over their mugs, apparently with no other goal than sipping tea.

Hardly a convivial atmosphere. Rowan wondered if the silence was due to her own presence, she being so obviously a stranger, or if it was the natural mood of the establishment.  

She selected an isolated seat in the back row, after determining that there were no hooks or rack available to hang her cloak. Apparently, one either kept one's outer clothing by one's side, or wore it despite the warmth; everyone else present was doing one or the other. Rowan draped her cloak on the chair next to hers. It sat there, creating its own pocket of cold and wet, drawing the heat from her body toward it, as if toward a small door open to the rain.

From her seat in the rear of the room, she was now presented with a view of the other patrons' backs. Inconspicuous, perhaps, but not the best position for gathering information. Rowan attempted to make a study of the customers from behind, and soon decided that all were laborers of some sort. With that small task accomplished, she had no other distraction, and discovered she could not share in the pointless sitting about which so engaged the other customers; and because she could not be mistaken for a local, she decided that there was no particular need to blend in. She removed the maps she had purchased from her shoulder-sack, selected one at random, and unfolded it.

The sound inspired curious side- and back-glances from the customers. Rowan allowed herself a few nods of greeting which went entirely ignored. She set to studying the south face of the city, from the wharves to Pylon Three. She sipped the tea, which was painfully hot, achingly sweet, and hours old.  

The map pleased and charmed her. It had not been generated by wizard-means but it seemed as detailed, and nearly as gracefully executed. Some quick method had been used for shading -- a screen and brush, perhaps, or a mask-and-stamp. The odd compass roses at top and bottom were obviously traced with templates, one canted for viewing from below, the other from above. A neat solution for mapping a vertical city.

To orient herself, she traced the long route from the harbor at sea-level up to her present position. Rocker Landing, the notation read. She hoped the name was not literally descriptive. If so, reason enough for the Man to be Trembling. Working on upward, she identified the landing where her lodging-house was located, from which she had descended earlier.

"A newling, by sight and by voice, so I'd say."

Rowan looked up. The man seated ahead of her had turned about and was regarding her with a cheery nonchalance very much at odds with his grim appearance, with red-rimmed eyes, sunken cheeks, unwashed hair and beard.  

"And if you did say so, you'd be correct," Rowan said. The lines about the man's eyes were deeply etched, and their configuration spoke of a rather different character than he currently presented.

"Well, it's welcome to all at the Trembling Man! There's no better place for warming the bones when the wind from the Gap numbs your knees and your elbows!"

Rowan glanced at the backs of the other customers, who displayed none of the welcome this man spoke of. "It's warm, I'll admit it," Rowan said; and noticed that she had fallen into the Crags native rhythm of speech. She wondered if it were contagious.  

"And reading a map! You'll be puzzling forever; the city's a maze, and the best routes are twisty. The eyes of a native are what you need, and the memory of native toes. And as you have neither, you might think of borrowing."

The man's interest was revealed. "For a fee?" Rowan asked, smiling thinly.

He waved a hand. "What's coin between new friends? The price of big mug, and I can advise you. And for a retainer, my wisdom at need, for the length of your stay."

"Payment in advance? That seems efficient --- for one of us. But once I hand over my coin, how do I know I'll ever find you again?"

Something changed in the air of the room; if backs could have eyes and ears, all those present were suddenly watching and listening, tensely. The man Rowan was speaking to froze; his false cheer vanished. His natural expression stood like a ghost of cruelty on his still face.

"Oh," he said quietly, dangerously. "Oh -- I can be found." After a long moment, he turned away from her. 

The stolid backs relaxed, betraying a deep sense of relief.

Rowan had not the slightest idea what had just occurred, but it came to her that the Trembling Man was not always a safe place to be. She should leave.

A second cup of tea was due her. After a few moments' thought, she rose and fetched it, then returned to her map, keeping her other senses alert.

The tea-shop had a single window to the left of the tables, curtained against the cold beyond the glass. A large, muscular woman seated near it gave a small sigh, and as if reluctantly, leaned toward it and lifted a corner of the quilted cloth, peered out.

The woman instantly had everyone's attention. When she dropped the corner again and returned to her tea, some customers made small noises of disappointment; others leaned back a bit in apparent satisfaction.  

Rowan considered. The rain, perhaps; the rain was keeping these laborers from their work -- but why would the woman need to look outside, with the tin roof rattling and thrumming?

Still, it explained the laborers' moods. Some, possibly those more ambitious, were eager to return to work. The others clearly preferred to spend the afternoon pointlessly lounging in the Trembling Man. The job must give them no satisfaction, Rowan thought, or perhaps their rate of pay was lower --

And at this point, the steerswoman realized that fully half the people present were convicted criminals.  

Their apathy was due to the fact that they received no wages whatsoever. All payment went to whoever had purchased the contract for their term of punishment.  

Presently the burly woman peered out of the window again, smiled, and resumed sipping. On the other side of the room a clearly disappointed free-worker rose to purchase another cup of tea. A man seated far to the front, bundled in hat, scarf and ancient coat, gave a long sigh, muttered something indecipherable, loosened his garments and removed his hat.

Color. A double line of yellow and green ran down the back of his hairless skull, bursting into blue, green, and red complexity to either side, all spots and angles and branches.

Kundekin.

Rowan very much wished to speak to a Kundekin.

But what was a Kundekin doing among the laborers?

Rowan watched him surreptitiously, and could not avoid concluding that he was, in fact, one of the indentured criminals.  

Her business was not likely to be approved of by the authorities. Perhaps a criminal would prove the best source of information -- but the man's crime might be anything, from tripping an aristocrat, to robbery, rape or murder. And the Trembling Man was no place to conduct a delicate conversation.

As she watched, the Kundekin removed a grimy kerchief from his coat-pocket, and wiped it across the bright patterns. His skin seemed damp. Rowan wondered if he were ill.

The rattling on the roof ceased, leaving a silence oddly close and intimate. Several people glanced toward the woman at the window.

She seemed disinclined to investigate. Finally the free-worker who had gone for the extra tea rose with an air of exasperation, and looked outside for himself. He made a small noise, then returned to his seat, drained his mug, and began putting on coat and scarf.  

A number of people did the same. A similar number hunched even more solidly in their seats, including the Kundekin. When the free-workers had finished preparation, they hesitated, glancing at each other. Finally one of their number, a wiry woman with wild hair barely constrained by a bright red head-scarf spoke up. "Give it up, you lot, Eames will be coming."

"He's not here yet."

"But he soon enough will be, you know it." She grew reluctantly sympathetic. "Come on, it's the hours spent idling that grow weary. A busy day dashes, it's gone in a wink! You'll be warm with the work, and then warm in your bed, with hot tea in your belly to lull you through sleep."  

Of the others, only the Kundekin showed any reaction: with an odd carefulness he slowly replaced his hat, then huddled deep into his coat and shivered. Rowan became certain that he was unwell. 

Outside: a clanging hand-bell, and a man's voice, calling muffled words. The free-workers responded immediately; and the others resigned to necessity. Chairs squeaked and scraped; mugs were delivered back to the counter. The room emptied of everyone but Rowan and the Kundekin, who paused long, heaved a great sigh, then slowly rose and followed after the workers. He moved heavily, with a pronounced limp.  

Rowan was alone with the old counter-man, who seemed to have fallen asleep. She waited until the sounds of the workers faded, then gathered her maps, donned her cloak, delivered her empty mug, and stepped outside.

It was snowing.  

Great, fat flakes, big as her thumb, drifting down smoothly and lightly, filling the air and all the empty spaces about with gentleness, and silence, and motion. The city itself, seen through this fall, was softened, with all its wild masses and angles rendered sweetly mysterious.  

And the steerswoman felt her heart lift, in an ascent so sudden and swift that her spirit seemed for a moment something other than her own possession: something free, that flew. This sort of snowfall always affected her so.

At the edge of the Red Desert, where Rowan was raised, winters were ironbound, cracking with cold, but it almost never snowed. Snow came so rarely that each time was a new wonder, yet often enough across the years that her heart did learn it. For the rest of her life, even when she became a steerswoman and knew that heavy snow meant slow and heavy traveling later -- even then, whenever Rowan saw this kind of snowfall she felt a perfect joy, however briefly: a child's joy magnified into a woman's heart. It was a happiness of utter simplicity, knowing neither future nor past -- only the single present wonder of soft whiteness falling from the sky. It made her want to laugh, and if she was alone, she always did. She was alone now; she laughed, holding her open hands up to the sky.

Refreshed in body and spirit, she continued to the foot of the next stairs, stepped to the rail of the landing, and stood facing outward into an emptiness now filled with fat, fast flakes. She savored the sight of snow falling unimpeded for such a great distance: flakes high above her, beside her, beneath her. How odd and lovely, to stand above falling snow; to watch it drift down and down to the harbor, invisible in whiteness, so far below.  

At the top of the next landing, Rowan discovered the occupation of the free and indentured laborers: they were sweeping the snow. They had spaced themselves up and down the stairs and landings, with square brooms the exact width of the stair-treads. Rowan passed the muscular woman, who worked with a slow and dogged precision, then passed several others, each with his or her assigned section. The sections were small, one set of rises apiece, with two people working the landings. Rowan thought this rather a waste of workers -- but then the snowfall increased, coming down now rapidly and heavily; and the division of labor proved correct after all.

Almost as if they had been expecting the snow to be this heavy. As if they had forewarning. Rowan wondered if this might be the case.  

The Kundekin had the shorter section of an angled set of stairs. Rowan paused by the rail as if again enjoying the view off the ledge; and when his counterpart above had finished her own section and returned to the top, leaving the Kundekin briefly alone, Rowan hesitantly climbed toward him.  

He worked on, slowly and methodically, obviously planning to ignore her. When she came near, he stepped a shuffling step aside to permit her to pass.

She paused, sifted through her small collection of Kundekin words, spoke tentatively. "...Anshult'?"

He startled hugely. "Ak!" He spun, arms splayed, turning a wild gaze on her. "Ya-mai!"

"Kan--" Rowan began; the man had only one eye, the other lid sunken into an empty red socket, a gruesome sight. "Ikmuss --" No, the verb must go on the end -- unless it was a question? The man had drawn back from her, she could not sort his expression from the brilliant patterns of his face.  

"Nay," he hissed at her, "ess' ferbot'!"

His urgency took her aback. She flustered, losing her fragile grip on his language; she had no idea what he had said. She groped in her mind, resorted to a well-drilled phrase: "Spreksy Folksprik?" Do you speak my language? Reply was a jerky gesture, urging her away. "Noor Doy?" she tried. Only your own?

A spate of words from the Kundekin, hissed and harsh. He up-ended his broom; she startled back, thinking he would strike her.  

He did not; he jabbed its point down violently, directly on his own right foot. And again; the sound was an unpleasant muffled thump. He showed no pain; he spoke again; he flailed his free hand at her. "Gay vegg!"

"Causing you trouble, that one?"  

Rowan looked up.

It was the bright-scarfed woman, standing a few steps above. "No," Rowan said, and began climbing toward her, leaving the Kundekin behind. "I'm afraid it's me who's bothering him." She attempted to seem both cheerful and awkward, and wondered if she were successful. "I'm sorry, I hope I haven't done anything wrong. I'm new to the city, and I'm afraid I don't know all of your customs yet. It's just..." She had reached the woman, and paused beside her. "Well... I couldn't help it, I was just so curious."  

The sweeper nodded, looking down toward the Kundekin. He had resumed his labors with a sort of brittle energy, weak and jittery. "It's the first that you've seen of his odd kind?" the laborer asked.

"Yes..."

"All so peculiar, and what you can see is one-tenth of the stories you hear. And probably that just one-tenth of the truth." The sweeper began climbing; Rowan fell in beside her. "But that one -- save curiosity for some better subject. That one is troublesome."

Rowan glanced back down. "He hardly seems capable of trouble. He seems..."

"True enough, there's less to him each year and each year over." After only a few steps, there was already half an inch of snow on the treads. The sweeper overtook Rowan, then kept just ahead, politely clearing space for Rowan's feet as she climbed. "But he's subject to strange fits, and run once already. That's when the spell took his foot from him..."

By the time they reached the top of the sweeper's assigned section, the snow was an inch deep, and the woman immediately set to her work with a will; Rowan left her behind. She passed other sweepers as she climbed and crossed the rises and landings that served the city of the Crags as streets and plazas.  

Eventually, Rowan reached her destination: a stubby flat, short in width but deeper than average, so that four ranks of houses were built one behind the other, pressing into a narrowing crack. The last houses were built directly against the stone of the cliff. A handful of twisted pine trees grew between and above, their trunks angling out before turning up, their branches now burdened with snow.

Rowan's lodgings were not in an inn, but a mere rooming-house. It hung like a cluster of barnacles on the side of the crack, the landing in front of it curving around the cliff's bulge to another flat on the other side. Following the shape of the rock wall, the building's second story overhung its first.  

Within, only a small sitting-room and an interior staircase. A collection of disconsolate chairs of various types were arranged about the room, in a configuration rendered peculiar to Rowan's eye, due to the lack of a hearth as focal point. The day-attendant, a doughy-looking woman somewhat younger than Rowan, sat in the most comfortable chair with her knitting in her hands and a two-year-old child playing with a ball of yarn at her feet. The attendant caught Rowan in a narrow glare. "You're not bringing food in, are you?" she asked in a voice whose stridency seemed more formal than genuine.

"Actually," Rowan said, "I do have --"

"Cooking is never allowed in the rooms."

"It's already been cooked --"

"And garbage can't stay in your room overnight. Bring it straight to the waste-bin out front."

"Yes, as you've said before -- "

"The neighbors have rats. I don't want them to colonize."

Rowan decided to see what would happen if she did not reply, and found that the woman behaved as if the steerswoman were no longer present. She checked her knitting, seeming pleased with the result, and held it up, addressing the child. "See, baby, so pretty!" The child squeaked and grinned, clutching at it, and the mother laughed with a simple gladness that rendered her, briefly, lovely.  

Rowan made her way up the narrow staircase; but halfway up, she attempted a question. "Have my friends returned yet, do you know?"

For no reason Rowan could discern, the woman puzzled. Then, having apparently sifted through her collection of stock phrases, she settled on: "The door is locked up at the midnight bell."

Hardly useful information. Still, sheer politeness impelled Rowan to say, "Thank you." She continued up. 

Above, she found Steffie standing in the corridor, peering curiously into a small side-chamber. "Have you seen this?" he said without preamble.

"I've both seen it and made use of it," Rowan said, sidling past him.  

In the chamber she shared with Bel, she dropped her shoulder-sack on the bed and hung her cloak on a rack of hangers occupying the curtained alcove that served as wardrobe. Steffie came to stand by her open door. "Well, it's odd, isn't it?"

"It's ingenious. And probably necessary. One could hardly construct a proper outhouse in a city built on the side of a cliff. At the very least, the citizens living below you would find reason to protest. I hope you remembered to pull the chain." 

"Well, I did, on account of the sign on the wall saying 'Pull on the chain before leaving the room.' What did you get?"

"Something to sustain us until morning..." Rowan pulled a paper-wrapped and string-tied package out of her satchel. Inside, there were slices of roast pork, bread, and cheese, neatly divided into four portions. Steffie fell on one with enthusiasm. "...And maps." With identical glee, Steffie abandoned his meal and set to unfolding one, spreading it out on the bed. Rowan set the rest of the food on a small side-table, over which hung an embroidered motto ornately admonishing: Cooking is never allowed in the rooms!

When she turned back, she found Steffie attempting to hold the map straight up, frustrated by its tendency to fall into folds. He persisted, grinning at it, charmed. "That's a vertical map."  

"Yes. I wanted to buy ones covering the entire city, but I thought it would be too suspicious. Not to mention expensive."

"Where are we on this? No, hang about..." He lay it down again, and traced with a finger. "Docks down here, and we climbed..." She watched as he retraced their route, switching back from rise to landing to rise, assembling it from the small sections that had been visible in the close weather during their climb. He was really quite good at it, and Rowan felt an odd pride, as if this were her doing. "Stiner's Landing," he announced. 

"Where's Bel?" Rowan wondered.

Steffie treated this as if it were the second part of a two-part test question. He plied the map again. "The landlord told her, Up four, over and left-down, over and down... Here it is, Cedar Landing. That's a nice name. Supposed to be a work-board there, with a wait-shelter nearby. And a lot of riff-raff and lollygaggers, to hear him tell it."

"And no hearth," Bel added, taking off her cloak as she entered. "How can you have a gathering-place with no fire to gather around?" Rowan leaned beside the window to let Bel reach the clothes-alcove. "And these cloaks mark us as foreigners. Not that they won't be able to tell as soon as we open our mouths."  

"Care must be taken, or newlings will tumble, and all they can hope is to meet with a flat," Steffie said, off-hand, still poring over the map.  

Silence from the two women; eventually Steffie looked up in puzzlement.

"Ha," Bel said, pleased.

Rowan said, with feeling, "Steffie, that's very good." 

He was surprised, then gave a shy shrug. "That's our landlord, more or less." He had rattled off the phrases, accent and rhythm, as if a born native.  

Rowan said, "How did I never know that you could do that sort of thing?"

"Well," and he flushed, looking aside, "I mostly used it to make fun of people..."

Rowan understood that one of these persons must have been herself. She took no offense whatsoever; she suspected she made too tempting a target, with her formal speech and harsh northern accent. "That's a very useful skill." Rowan had a good ear for accents, but had only occasionally found reason to attempt imitation. She found that rhythm came naturally to her, but specific pronunciation took concentration, and tended to slide.

"I had two people try to trick me out of some money while I was reading the work-lists," Bel said, as Rowan passed her meal. Bel took it and settled down on the second bed. "And one who actually asked me straight out, which was honest, at least. But the whole room stopped and stared at him."

"Begging is illegal in the city," Rowan said. "As is vagrancy."

Bel nodded, and took a bite of cheese. "And I saw a Kundekin."

"That's interesting. So did I." She related her experience, as her friends listened avidly.  

Bel nodded when she was done. "I didn't try to talk to the fellow I saw, he was with someone else. An official-looking woman with a tree-emblem on her surcoat. They consulted the work-lists, talking to each other in the Kundekin tongue, then went away. Later I went back to the board, to try to figure out what they'd been looking at, but I couldn't see anything special."

Rowan folded her arms and leaned back. "Well. At least we know the Kundekin can be found in the streets of the city. We may have other opportunities."

Steffie turned his attention turned back to the map, tilting it to better catch the light, and finally shifting to the chair by the glass-paned window. Outside, past his shoulder, the gloom was deepening, and Rowan could feel the chill pushing in against the glass. "I suppose dark comes before nightfall hereabouts," he muttered. "Didn't happen to get any candles, did you?" 

But Rowan said, in a small voice: "Oh..." 

Steffie startled, then turned to look; Bel clambered over the bed to join them. "Is it a fire?"

"No..."

Stiner's Landing was bathed in a cool, sweet light. Two glass globes set atop ornate metal poles were glowing, far more brightly than any candle-lit street-lamp. They had illuminated instantly, simultaneously. The globes were featureless, pure white, and each wore a small cap of fallen snow that tilted, shifted, then ran to water as Rowan watched. They haloed the air about them. Downslope, more were visible, down the twisting stair-streets of the city, spreading out onto the flats below. And far across the Long Gap, tiny in the distance, the handful of stairs and landings of Northside displayed their own small white stars spreading across the cliff-face, like angular constellations glinting through the snowfall.  

"They're like the lights in the harbor at Wulfshaven," Bel said, and moved closer to the glass, kneeling on the arm of the chair. "But so many... Are they all over the city?"

"Yes. All of the landings, and most of the rises." Rowan wished the night were clear. Such a strange sight... She reached out to lay her hand against the cold glass; light shone between her spread fingers. "They're lovely..."

Quiet, but for the hissing outside of falling snow, the sputtering as it melted on the closest globes.  

Eventually, Steffie said, in a small voice: "So... That's magic, then."

#

In the small room, asleep in the weird brightness of the street-globes through the window, Rowan dreamed of the Kundekin snow-sweeper.

It was the same encounter she had with him earlier, playing again in her dreams, like actors stepping through a known script.  

All went as before, and a part of Rowan watched her dream-self again try to greet the Kundekin, struggle to remember a few words of his language, hear to his incomprehensible reply as he again thumped the broom-end on his foot.   

The dream-Rowan was as startled and confused as before. But oddly, the part of her that watched the events seemed to know what the man was saying.

Such things, when they happen in dreams, are usually false. And so the watching-Rowan watched more carefully, listened more closely, expecting to find her imagined comprehension to prove entirely illusory.

But she still seemed to understand...

At this point, Rowan realized that although she had been too startled and flustered to understand at the Kundekin originally, she had in fact heard the man's words, and a part of her had remembered them. That part was now presenting the events to her again, in a quieter, calmer moment.

She now understood that she was dreaming lucidly; the phenomenon of knowing that one was dreaming, while continuing the dream. It was, for her, a very rare experience. It had happened to her only once before, when in her sleep she had worked out the method of solving a particularly difficult equation.  

The problem with information in a dream is that the knowledge is likely to melt away as the dream fades. But in lucid dreams, one could sometimes gain a measure of control over the events. Rowan's lucid self attempted the same technique she had used on the previous occasion.

As the events in the dream reached their conclusion, she slipped them back to their beginning, watched them start to unfold once more. And meanwhile, almost on the sly, she slowly willed herself to wake.  

Very, very slowly.

She became aware by degrees of the heavy blanket weighting her to the bed, of her own leaden limbs, of the white light slanting on the walls -- all overlaid still with the sights and sounds of the conversation on the stair.

Clumsily, half-awake, Rowan dragged herself from the bed to the armchair; by touch alone drew paper from a folio in her pack; managed to locate a bit of charcoal stored in a small tin box -- all the while, listening closely, closely, to the Kundekin's words.

The scene ended. She sent it back to its start. Blindly, she wrote.

Yes: some of the man's words did match words whose meaning she knew... She ran the scene through again, becoming inevitably more awake.  

No! he had said. It's forbidden!

Do you have -- something, she did not know the word. "Fogel" -- what was that?

Do you want -- "Selbanmeer"... "Sel" meant "the same." "Meer" was "me"...

Do you want to become like me? And the broom thumped down on his empty boot.

"Taklick"; "daily" -- Every day I feel the -- "Binnder"; Binding? Rope? No, tether. Every day I feel the tether, as if it grows tighter, and my heart grows tighter the same. I twist, twist, and one day, one day my twist will break and I will spring up into the air. The wicked tether will take a foot again -- but no need for feet when you fly! I will fly, yes, fly in just one direction: down. I will make that flight and laugh at Abremio as I fall.

I feel I could do this now. Do you want to see it? Do you want to?

Then: "Gay vegg!" Go away!

Rowan leaned back in the chair, fully awake, gazing at the words. She wondered if the conditions of this man's punishment had driven him insane.

A sound, quiet: steps, climbing the stairs, slow and weary, then steps in the corridor. Rowan pulled a long shirt over her head, and slipped, barefoot, out into the hall.

*******************************************

"Is that all?" Maya asks. It was. The rest of the book is blank.

"On the one hand, I'm really stoked that we got to read this at all. On the other, it makes me want the rest so much!" he agrees.

"It says Book Six. So there must be another book in between this and The Language of Power. Do you think they'll come out close together? Five and Six?" Maya asks.

"Seems likely."

"Oh I can't wait. Rowan and Bel and Steffie and that amazing vertical city, and what is going on with those people?" Maya bounces with excitement.

"Rowan will figure it out," he says, comfortably. "I want to know what the Kundekin are. That word -- I'm sure it's like seyoh or Krue and it means something. But what?"

She shakes her head. "Kundekin, Kunnndekkkinnn. Nothing."

"Let's read something else," he suggests. "Otherwise we're just going to keep pining for more."

"What have we got?" Maya reaches out to the pile on the table. "Max Gladstone. Stop Motion."

"Gladstone. He wrote the Craft sequence, right? They were nominated for best series Hugo a few years ago. And he co-wrote that novella everyone's talking about This Is How We Lose The Time War with Amal El-Mohtar. And I read a really creepy Lovecraftian story of his on Tor.com. And his new book's called Empress of Forever which is a terrific title."

Maya hesitates. 'I hope this isn't too creepy!"

"Let's give it a go," he says, and together they read.