Lhaurel looked up, still lying prone on the floor, feeling the sway of the canal’s waters beneath her.
Talha stood in the doorway, though only her head and one shoulder were visible. The look on Talha’s face was one of utter and complete surprise.
“What are you doing down on the floor?”
Lhaurel’s mouth worked, but her mind completely failed her. She knew the truth would sound like a very poor excuse and—in all actual truth—Lhaurel really had no idea what had just happened to her. It had felt . . . it had felt as if she’d had access to her powers once again. For an instant, for half a moment of awesome, mind-altering clarity, she’d been able to be who the Path had meant her to be.
Had meant her to be?
“Get up this instant,” Talha snapped, stepping through the door and casting a long shadow over Lhaurel’s form. Lhaurel pushed herself up and reached for her staff. An inch from it, she hesitated for a moment, then the feeling of pride welled up in her again and her open hand darted forward and snatched the staff from the ground in the blink of an eye. She twisted it as she continued to rise, hiding the orb behind her back by tucking the staff back up underneath one arm in a pose which a warrior would have recognized as a defensive posture.
Lhaurel cringed at how forced it must look, and felt sick at the conflicting feelings of dread and elation within her. Part of her wanted to hide what had just happened. The other wanted to announce it with the arrogant condescension of one befitting her rank.
“Come,” Talha said, knowing eyes flicking over Lhaurel’s form and then back outside. Lhaurel breathed in a silent sigh of relief that Talha hadn’t noticed the staff or, at the very least if she
had
, she didn’t say anything. For some reason, that was almost as important to Lhaurel as anything else in this new life.
New life?
All other thoughts were pushed out of Lhaurel’s mind as she stepped out of the room and out onto the barge. For the briefest of moments, Lhaurel thought that they’d simply passed into a part of the canal that had walls higher than any they’d seen before. Then she noticed windows in the walls and ropes crossing from one window to another on either side of the canal and realized that they were buildings. The barge passed through row after row of massive buildings made of odd rectangular shaped stones that formed the walls. They were dark brown, orange, or red in color, though none were consistent. It was as if they were walking along a path through a small village or town, but instead of a path or a road, it was a canal. A long, narrow boat passed them in the water. Several people sat inside, staring over that the barge with awe. A tall man stood upright at the back of the craft, pushing it along with a long wooden pole.
Lhaurel turned slowly where she stood, taking it all in. A window opened forty feet above them and a woman looked out, long hair held back by a colorful cloth. She pulled on a rope there next to her window and then fastened something scarlet to it before letting the line back out again. Something dark green and long went on the rope next.
Is it a flag of some sort? Perhaps a signal system for the barges?
Lhaurel peered closer. “Are those clothes?”
Talha followed Lhaurel’s gaze, her movements visible in Lhaurel’s periphery.
“Yes. She is putting out the wash, as they would call it.”
Lhaurel watched the woman continue to move the line and add more clothes until the barge passed far enough down the canal that Lhaurel couldn’t see her anymore.
“What is this place?” Lhaurel asked, her voice betraying her awe. All thoughts of her strange experience with the staff had left her. Smells and sounds Lhaurel couldn’t even begin to identify assaulted her from other directions. A small breeze passed along the canal, carrying the salty tang of the sea with it.
“Anichka,” Talha said, a smile in her voice. “The place where all trade in the Empire meets. All nine of the Great Houses have a presence here, along with dozens of lesser families. Most of the Empire’s mercantile activities happen here, along with much of the manufacturing and refining processes. It has stood for over a thousand years, growing and shaping itself around the Empire and the Empire shapes itself around it.”
Lhaurel pulled hers eyes away from the sights to glance over at Talha. The tall, thin woman had a faraway look in her eye. It matched the odd longing in her voice.
“This place is the heart of our realm,” Talha said, turning about slowly and looking up the old, red-brick walls, “containing the arteries through which the life blood of our people flows.”
Lhaurel watched as the barge approached what looked to be a massive arching stoneway, like the ones in the Sharani Desert, but that bridged the two sides of the canal. It was made of a dark, greenish stone carved with intricate swirling patterns depicting vines and leaves the likes of which Lhaurel only recognized in memories that weren’t her own. Those same memories told her the stoneway here was called a bridge, linking road and paths together over bodies of water. It was an odd feeling, seeing something for the first time and also having it seem as familiar and normal as the walls of the Sidena Warren.
As they passed under the bridge, the scrollwork continuing beneath it and across to the other side, she reached up a hand in the semidarkness and brushed her fingertips across it. She was surprised to find it smooth to the touch, slick with water and a thin greenish film that lingered on her fingertips after they passed through to the other side and back into the light. Lhaurel brought her fingers up before her eyes, working the green film between them and feeling the strange slickness it left behind. She was surprised to find herself smiling.
Talha moved closer to her, a smile on her own face.
“That bridge has weathered a hundred years. It’s a newer construction, but still, it is a pretty thing, isn’t it? In a few hundred more, it will be considered a legacy as fine as the older bridges here.”
Lhaurel looked over at the woman, unable to articulate her own thoughts and emotions. A hundred years seemed like such an enormous time to think about, especially when considering the average life expectancy in the Sharani Desert was only a few decades. Over half of the children Lhaurel grew up with didn’t even know who their parents were, let alone their grandparents. There simply wasn’t any time left over to consider leaving behind legacies for those that came after you. The Sharani Desert was a place of constant battle, a war with everything around you, just to survive. Lhaurel saw the decadence and peace the Empire represented and found herself unable to fully comprehend it with words. Yet a part of her understood. Part of her saw it and knew it for what it was, though peace was something she’d never truly known, at least not for any time that wasn’t fleeting. Contemplating it,
feeling
it, left Lhaurel in tears.
“It’s so beautiful,” Lhaurel said, unable to contain the emotion swelling within herself.
Talha’s eyebrows drew together above her nose and the corners of her perfect lips turned down into a frown. “As I said, that particular piece of architecture is not old. Relative to the age of this city, it is but a structural infant. Nor, might I add, is it the most opulent of displays. The carvings and artwork reflect a naturalist school of thought that was prevalent a hundred years ago. It has since given rise to both the realist and representational schools of thought in art, though Alcine has taken measures to resurrect it.”
Lhaurel didn’t bother to correct Talha’s assumption or even attempt to follow what the woman was saying. Still, she forced herself to stop crying and simply watched as the bridge passed behind them.
They passed under a number of bridges after that and Lhaurel was able to see that Talha, despite frequent lectures on the different schools of artistic thought, was right. The first bridge they passed had been the least opulent or breathtaking. One was wrought completely of black iron, looking like the latticework ribs of a sailfin corpse, but suspended between two buildings. Dozens of people stood within it, easily visible from below. Many of them threw down the white petals of a flower Lhaurel didn’t know—either from her own memory or those given to her. The petals fell around them, like a soft rain of leaves. The people cheered and, following Talha’s example, Lhaurel bowed to them as they passed around to the other side of the bridge.
Yet another of the bridges appeared to be made entirely of glass, though as they got closer Lhaurel realized that a lattice of painted metal was the main element of the bridge, with colored panes of glass placed in the spaces between the latticework. Light passing through the glass made a vast, ethereal amalgam of colors and patterns on the canal waters below, an effect made all the more remarkable and brilliant as the barge passed beneath it and the colors passed over Lhaurel and the others out on deck. Lhaurel felt her awe and wonder swell to epic proportions, though she was able to hold back the tears. She leaned against her staff, using it for support, glad of its presence there.
Another bridge yet looked odd in comparison to the others in its simplicity. It didn’t stretch in a wide graceful arch, like all the rest. Instead, the walls of the canal rose up higher than they normally would and the bridge stretched across the intervening space as a simple straight line. A railing of wrought iron bars graced each side of the bridge, though no other ornamentation marked its simple structure. As the barge passed beneath the bridge and Lhaurel noticed the bottom was made up only of wooden slats, she turned to Talha with her lips pursed and a question in her expression.
Talha smiled and gestured toward the bridge with her staff, the blood red jewel at the end catching the light.
“That is a more recent bridge,” Talha explained. “Some of the actual roadways through the city are owned by one Great House or another. House Burget commissioned several students of the realist movement to fashion that one. I’m not entirely sure they were paid for their work.” She grinned as if she’d just said something incredibly funny, so Lhaurel returned the grin, even though she didn’t get the joke. She wasn’t entirely sure there had been one.
After a time, Lhaurel began to notice a change in the way the water flowed around them. Several of the priestesses that had been using their abilities as wetta to propel the barge forward moved away from the rails. The water flowed more slowly and the canal itself began to widen. The massive walls on either side of them, well, buildings really, began to shrink in height and move further and further back from the water’s edge. Lhaurel watched in fascination as other barges and craft began appearing on the horizon, tied up to the side of the canal or at long wooden jetties that poked out into the canal itself. Lhaurel noticed several other side canals sprouting off from the channel they followed, something Lhaurel hadn’t seen before. The salt smell of brine and fish was heavy here.
Lhaurel watched the boats and barges around them, studying the people scurrying about either within one such vessel or else scuttling from one to the other. Men
and
women lined the sides of the canal, busy about various tasks and activities that Lhaurel simply had no means of labeling.
Lhaurel tried to study the people on the walkways on the shore, but was so overwhelmed by the motion of it all, the swirling torrent of bright colors, the press of hundreds of bodies, the soft hum of conversation and motion, and the strange mixture of both foreign and familiar smells that she was forced to look away, breathing deeply to calm her nerves. It wasn’t that she was scared or frightened by it. Not at all. In fact, the opposite was true. It was as if she were trying to see and understand a thousand different new things she loved all at once and finding herself unable to take it all in at the same time.
“Are you alright, Honored Sister?” a voice asked.
Lhaurel looked to the side, seeing Josi standing there. The young priestess stood with a slightly stooped posture, as if she no longer had the strength to stand upright. Her eyes, however, were bright.
“I’m fine,” Lhaurel lied. “Now go rest. You look ready to fall over.”
The priestess bowed low, her red-brown hair slipping down around her face like a veil.
“As you command,” she said, and back toward the door to one of the smaller huts, but then hesitated there, looking back.
“Yes?” Lhaurel asked, still watching her.
Josi blushed and bowed again. Lhaurel wished they’d all stop doing that.
“My apologies, Honored Sister. I was merely taking a moment to look out over the place where I was born.” Josi made a small gesture toward the far side of the canal.
Lhaurel glanced that way, then back at the priestess. “You were born here?”
The barge rocked as it hit a patch of swifter moving water, but then settled as the priestesses at the rails compensated for the change in motion.
Josi nodded. “In the slave slums over there behind the waterfront. My parents worked in the textile factory near there. My father worked the cotton threshers and my mother was a weaver.”
“Was?”
The priestess looked confused for a moment, her lips twitching toward a frown, then her eyes darted to something at Lhaurel’s side and her eyes widened. She slipped into a low bow in an instant.
“You know you are not to speak of your past, priestess,” Talha said, her voice uncharacteristically harsh. “You know the punishment for breaking this oath.”
Josi paled, blood draining from her face in a rush.