Chapter Three

  1.

  The downpour cascaded over Verna’s uncovered head, falling through her plaits like sieved streams of crystal, slightly tinted by the oil in her hair. Her skort, tucked into her boots, was bloated with dubious fortunes, courtesy of the urchins gracing the streets and playing at mock wars with whatever came to hand. She was looking forward to examining and categorizing them all once she got back to her room. Urchins no longer, but specimens in her bottle — hah, that’d teach them. Better than dwelling on that embezzling fool Vasilar and his over-inflated coffers. She veered off to her left to avoid a particularly big boy dressed like a cross between a turnip and a bottle-gourd and found herself under the scaly awning of a shop selling stuffed rice cakes and fried panyars soaked in honey.

  Vasilar was known for his alleged civil planning skills, specializing in the production of scaly awns and roofs preferred by the merhumans, partly because they didn’t have to spend much on construction material and partly because it was their tradition. But two days ago, she’d heard from an entire marketful of outraged merhumans how the newfolk construction man up at the coconut-shaped palace was stealing scales meant for construction and replacing it with cheap filth from human factories that melted under the summer and smelled during the rains. A complaint filed with the giant ruling lady at the golden palace was yet to be reviewed, with many doubting it ever would. Verna, furious and all too aware of what was unsaid beneath the conversations, went to meet Vasilar herself to try and convince him to uphold his renown by compensating the afflicted population. Yet, for her troubles, she had gained exactly seventeen insults, fifteen of which were about her being a she, her mother, her non-existent sisters, and what he’d like done with them all, involving a few pigs, and strangely, some pigeons thrown into the mix.

  A sigh from her turned into a start as she heard something hitting the ankle-deep water with a thud-splash, and looked across to see a merhuman in old baggy trousers and a cement-stained shirt creating a pink puddle around him. She was halfway there when she realized the pinkness was him bleeding from somewhere, despite him still being very much conscious and looking at her.

  “Whatever made you use that tactic when you clearly must’ve known you would end up as urchin-bait, mister?” she asked, half-panicked and half-strategizing as her medical knowledge kicked in.

  “Thought it’d be easy than doing it by me, and, ya know,” he said jovially, wincing slightly. A crowd had started to gather with men at the forefront, neither moving forward to help nor making way for Verna to move out of the ring to look for help.

  Huffing with exasperation, for this was proving to be another tedious day in an innumerable line of them, she said, “Let me take you to the hospital. Now just relax, will you? And stop craning your neck, I don’t think I am going to fall for your fins!” Without thinking about it, she pulled clean drops out of the air and turned them into bottle-gourd-shaped urchin-like structures that bore him on their cloudlike shoulders. With another breath of hers, their legs and arms tried to signal the approach of a sick person, looking more like humans under a heavy hangover being forced to dance at high noon. Her charge began to grin, and she grinned back. “The hospital is right around the corner,” she said.

  “Paa!” came a voice from behind her, and she heard the pitter-patter of a child’s slipper-clad feet joining her strange procession. “What happened to you? You are leaving a pink trail! Will you join the Morsvin’s castle? I don’t want you to go there! You promised to eat my shrimp pies at my wedding!”

  “No, Sili, I am only injured. This newfolk lady is marching me to the hospital,” said the labourer.

  “But can we trust her?” asked the girl, with all the suspicion and hope of a child. Turning to Verna, she asked, “Can we trust you? Or will you take his scales and mine and give it to Vasilar of the huge yellow eyes?”

  “He doesn’t have yellow eyes, and don’t worry, I am getting your father to the hospital,” said Verna, fighting hard to prevent herself from smiling at an image of the thieving scumbag with tomato-like eyes. She only half-paid attention to the clear voice behind her as the child conversed with her father while he was borne aloft like some prize of drunken ants.

  At the hospital, typical of the docks, in fact any oldfolk locales, there was a huge line of patients registered and waiting to see a doctor. Verna elbowed her way to the front and glared at the hook-nosed clerk playing highlord over the door into hospital premises. “I have a patient bleeding here,” she said briskly. “He needs medical attention immediately.”

  As though on cue, the man fainted, and Sili, the merhuman child, began to sniffle. “Almost everyone here is bleeding, woman,” said the unbothered lord of the gates, and Verna considered if she could get away with turning him into a croaking, creaking hinge on that door.

  “He has bled a lot. It is not good for him,” she said as calmly as she could. Her watery minions danced more in response to her agitation.

  “There are no free beds at present,” said his lordship pompously.

  “Is he to be on your conscience then, for this unjust discrimination? You are more like a roach, feeding off anything available, and surviving the thrice-thrown apocalypse!” she snapped. She turned around and began marching toward the door. If these buggers couldn’t do their job, she would do it for them.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” stormed the clerk behind her, and when she did not respond or pause, he called out to “Security!” A couple of fat pillars barred her way, with five more blocking the entrance. Verna quickly assessed her odds. It was a machine activated barrier, one without a caster, and a high-grade one at that. She could perhaps take it down in three minutes before she was brought down herself, and if she lost consciousness, the merhuman would fall down on the muddy, slime-flecked floor, no longer supported by her power.

  “I am going to treat him,” she snapped with all the authority she could muster, even as she knew what was going to happen.

  “If you could, why did you bring him here? Anyway, show me your credentials; then you could treat him,” said the clerk, as though it were a reasonable proposition. She only half-heard him, already assessing the most efficient way to clean out the wound with hersin water she did not have, then to stitch it with earth magic to encourage faster regrowth. Could she use a padding of onion skin instead? It would hurt a bit, but he was unconscious anyway. It was with a jolt that she realized she wouldn’t be able to do any of that. A feeling of being forced into an ornamental blouse-wrap with not enough holes for her limbs came over her, and she once again heard a very familiar voice telling her to behave “as befitted her role in life.”

  In a last bid to do what she was fully capable of, she said, “Why don’t you watch while I do it to see if I have the credentials? It clearly is a mistake to bring him here.” She cursed herself for not having found something to bandage him with first. Merhumans had a slower flow of blood and higher volumes of it compared to humans, and the man was not in life-threatening danger, but early treatment would certainly have eased his recovery. For men like these, sickness brought unemployment, which heralded hunger and more sickness in a vicious dance of elements.

  “I have no desire to see his guts turned inside-out, fit only to be thrown at the ravens from the cliffs,” jeered the clerk, flooding her mind with memories she’d rather not think of. A dehydrated kitten drowning in the milk from its stomach because she was coaxing its body to nourish itself; a plant of hersin falling comatose for a week because she was unsuccessful in drawing its sap, accidentally damaging its nerves in her bid to avoid hurting it; and a child whose cold got worse because she did not realize amaranth and panyar was a bad combination because of the honey involved in the latter.

  Keeping her face still and doing her best not to drown in memories, she joined the line, with the child named Sili next to her and her unconscious charge mercifully being bandaged by an old merhuman janitor.

  “Wish I could do that,” said the child wistfully, pointing at Verna’s watery minions. “Lam and the other meanies will never hit me if I had my own guards.”

  “You could try,” said Verna. “Just make sure you don’t poke your guard’s finger up a meanie’s nose.” Sili giggled.

  Quite a while later, another attendant, surlier than the clerk if possible, took charge of the Merhuman labourer. Sili did not cry, but looked very forlorn, so Verna asked when the man could have visitors. After another interminable wait, she was told that he could have visitors by the evening of the next day. Sili seemed relieved to hear it.

  “Shall I get you some panyar? Or would you rather have lunch?” Verna asked, wondering if the child had a mother waiting anxiously at home with a soup of shellfish going slowly cold.

  “Lunch, if it ain’t a bother. Maa will be at the forges by now, and the remaining lunch down the endless gullets of my brothers,” said Sili. So, Verna took the girl to a stall and bought her some bread with a thick vegetable stew, a stuffed rice cake, and a panyar stuffed with freshly cut fruits. Watching the little girl eat with gusto while chattering about her cats and squeavils being at each other’s throats made Verna smile. She could not quite forget the humiliating and sickening turn of events at the hospital, which was preceded by the series of altercations at the university where she went to teach magical theory, and the port where she tried to suggest work-saving organization methods for the labourers’ benefit, and even at the ramshackle excuse for a city library. Having found a child who found everything as an opportunity to sense and know, instead of merely experiencing and forgetting, she finally felt a bit buoyed.

  “I go now,” said Sili after the lunch. “Sailing lessons with Aunt Marmara start soon.”

  After bidding the girl farewell, Verna began to walk toward the residence of the Duchess, the ruler of the entire province of Suva. Vasilar needed to be brought to justice, and Verna needed to figure out if melding a pull of lightning and a push of water could create any energy suitable for conditioning magic resistance. If lighning, made out of air and water, could do it, and water was the ultimate conditioner for the human body, what would their combination do? Never mind that, a day without urchins would be the ultimate conditioner for her mental state now.

  “Get your hands off that!” she snapped, whipping around to find a teenage merhuman boy, old enough to have fuzz on his upper lip, in the process of trying his luck with her purse. But it was too late; the rice cake she had stored there for her temporary maid’s child disappeared up a lamp post along with its new grimy transport. It was a second before Verna noticed she had also grasped the post and coaxed its particles to shift and slide upwards, carrying her up like a joyride going the wrong direction. The boy looked back, yelped with shock, then threw himself onto a warehouse roof, its metallic tiles ringing with impact. Verna leaped more gracefully, landed on the balls of her boots, threw herself into a roll, then surged out of it with the boy’s neck firmly clasped in her hand. He looked totally bewildered.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  “That rice cake was not yours!” she said indignantly. “You could have just asked me!”

  “As if you would have given it to me,” said the boy, and his accent sounded much cleaner for a Suva child. “You newfolk are all similar. You take and take and take, till the rest have nothing, less than nothing, while you sit in your golden palaces bloated like cows in confinement! I really hope the Great Lilek with his blue robes and red swords would get to the lot of you soon!”

  She could see he was scared, but there was too much anger bottled inside him to give way to the fear and keep his words to himself.

  “So do you want lunch or not?” she asked, while her mind wondered how effective he would be as a military commander, or a member of the Duchess’s public counsel.

  “And what will you make me do in return for that? Clean your stables and hold your footstool? Murder a puppy that accidentally licked you? Sit at your tables and eat the scraps you throw down like your obedient, mindless slave?”

  “None of that. You will eat first, then tell me more about this Lilek. I have heard many of your tales, but never this,” she said.

  “What would a newfolk, especially a woman, know about Wismeik the Evil or the eternal shell of watery breath? Just because you know that Maen is the father of Wismeik doesn’t mean you know everything.”

  “I know that Osaif granted Wismeik immortality, but at the cost of a diet of blood,” she said mildly, and the rational part of her marvelled at how easy it was to baffle people, whether oldfolk or of the new. The boy came with her to eat, and while he did, sitting at the same rickety chair of driftwood and reeds Sili had used a while back, he told her about Lilek.

  According to the would-be revolutionary, Lilek was a being of water in whose eyes one could see the entire ocean, complete with all its lives and wonders. He was born a human man but touched by the gods when they saw his heart pump fire at the injustices done to merhumans. Whether the plights of other oldfolk races bothered him or not remained a thing of mystery. He had a hundred warriors following him, he didn’t need sleep, and he only ate from the gods’ own plates. His sword was a living thing he had had since ten, and he was very adept at using it. And he had a cloak of darkness that also acted as a shield, for how else would he have defeated seven-hundred human soldiers oppressing merhumans just a week ago?

  This last bit jolted Verna. “Defeated? You mean, like in a duel?” She could see the ridiculousness of it even as she said it.

  “No! Killed them all, leaving behind a pond of blood and wetting the ground with bodies scattered everywhere!” said the boy as he finished the last of his lunch.

  Verna felt uneasy. Had she not heard of this because of who she was, or because no one there bothered to know about this?

  “Let’s strike a bargain,” she said. “I could teach you letters and numbers, if you would tell me more about what it is to be a merhuman.” She held up a hand as the boy was opening his mouth to interrupt. “No, not the easy aspects of it. What I haven’t seen, you have made abundantly clear. I want to know about you as a people, with your hopes, dreams, beliefs, and so on.”

  “You want to know what we would do if we weren’t oppressed right now,” said the boy. At her nod, he looked outraged, probably because her reward for it was tempting, or because the chance to show off to a newfolk woman was what he had been dying for. Either way, he gritted his teeth and nodded. Then, before she could say anything else, he left the stall and became one with the crowd.

  Verna sighed. She noticed that the sun was out, making her sweat and stink as badly as the poorly paved roads. So, she left the docks and began her long walk toward the hillock where the Duchess’ palace was located.

  2.

  The Empire, functionally, looked like a many-jointed insect. Before the human ascendancy, there were three densely settled peripheral regions, separated by the vast central forests where humans lived. The mountains were bitterly cold and wet even at the height of summer, and their lower reaches carried the risk of being spotted by one of the oldfolk volcanics, which could result in anything from mutilation to enslavement. Each side of the forests was taken up by one of the oldfolk, and each remained on friendly terms with its neighbours. Humans didn’t have many rights, but their central position gave them the leverage of being traders, even if they had no actual power. Their treatment by the oldfolk was inconsistent at best, and benignly exploitative at worst. However, the humans, through a sheer rise in population that was only enabled by their grit and ingenuity, succeeded in carving out a province for themselves from the clutches of the forest. What proceeded was the rampant building of roads, ports, and bustling new cities. With an influx of human magical engineers, soldiers and traders, the central province soon became the heart of the organism, no longer merely a trade route. Suva, the merhuman province, was the last card to fall, and once it happened, the Woodman Empire had become the sole power east of the Canu mountain ranges.

  Each province was ruled by an agent of the Emperor, who was free to depose them in theory, but those days were long gone, and the emperor silently sanctioned their primogeniture now. Their loyalty, too, was supposed to be unquestionable to the Empire, but hereditary succession meant they all looked after their own interests beyond the pretty words floated at the court in Onsoona every once in a while. The Empire’s isolated position secured and stagnated it at the same time, and the provinces were turning their backs on the very ideals that allowed them to rise. Humans at the lowest social strata were increasingly being excluded from quality education and magical training, trades were becoming monopolistic, armies were becoming family-oriented, and loyalty was increasingly owed to individuals rather than standards. The oldfolk suffered the most in the turmoil, as the rot of society angered the common people, and that anger found new targets in ready-to-scapegoat oldfolk instead of people like Vasilar. There was also no place for Verna in such a society, where the only words one was allowed to air were ones that served a purpose for someone, but she did not care about that. It was the waste of all her skills that gutted her, as there were so many people she could help but wasn’t allowed to, for all her mastery of the many paths of magic and a fair few nonmagical arts.

  These were her musings as she trudged up the hillock, watching Sir Khembi ride out of the palace, not on his horse, but on an enormous elephant. A dash of distaste twisted her lips at the cruel spikes on the riding crop he held. Noticing her displeased features, the nobleman leered, then deliberately beat the beast into a run. Feeling terrible for something unnamable, Verna went inside.

  “Your ladyship pushes the bounds of hospitality owed to a guest,” screeched the butler. “Mud and mer-filth! None of us here will touch it! Who would even clean it all up?”

  “I never asked you to,” she snapped, having had enough for a day.

  Perhaps the man was stupid, or perhaps he simply failed to note the warning tics of her anger, for he continued to crow about how she was a highborn lady, sent to study under the great Duchess’ wing, and how she could not subject herself or her servants to filth in this irresponsible way. She plunged her hand into her pocket and found a small toad, complete with the scales native to Suva. Bye bye, Morsanasor. You’ll never be a specimen now or get to serve science. She moved closer to the unsuspecting butler and dropped Mor onto his shoulder, and while he stood gaping like a post-box, climbed up the sweeping sea stone stairs to her very-much-guest quarters.

  Halfway up, she called back to him, “I believe your clothes, like mine, are washed by merhuman laundresses? Or does your salary permit you to buy new clothes on a daily basis?” Without waiting for an answer, she tromped up the rest of the stairs. Foregoing the courtesy of a wash, she knocked at the open door of Lady Strovinkaya’s audience chamber. Maybe the great lady was in the mood for a handshake; perfect way to add on Morsanasor’s legacy.

  Disbelief and annoyance chased each other on Lady Strovinkaya’s pudgy face before settling onto an oily smile. “My dear, what an unusual surprise! What may I do for you?”

  “Have you considered what to do with Vasilar yet?” asked Verna, her tone neutral except the expected curiosity.

  “What is there to do but to punish the lying scoundrel, my dear?” said the lady. But before Verna could rejoice, the woman added, “Vasilar has been in the business for two decades now. This city would not exist without his assistance. He only makes the materials cheaper, and all these merhumans would be filthier living in streets that are clouded with dust when dry and debris-ridden when raining. They would take his materials but turn around and call the man a thief — so like them, my dear. I see it every day.”

  “But have you looked to see if there is any truth in the allegations?” asked Verna, feeling sick. “I could—”

  “Oh, no, my dear. In case you have forgotten, you are here precisely so you don’t cause any more trouble like that. Oh, and you need not teach me the business of ruling, dear. I have no need to explain to you, but you shall know that the accuser has also been spreading seditious rumours about a great saviour on the march to kill the newfolk. There is no smart way to have stirred up trouble, but at least they could have found different people to do the rumourmongering. Besides, Vasilar is a graduate of Onsoona University. He is as qualified a human as they come. Their lies are so obvious.”

  “Did you not hear anything about Lilek, then?” asked Verna, feeling more disbelieving than relieved. For some inexplicable reason, she was certain that the boy was not lying. But did he simply believe what was recounted to him, or was there more to this?

  “Oh, I hear so much about Lilek, just as I do about every other boogeyman invoked to scare children and oldfolk alike. If I chased up every story’s tree, you wouldn’t have a glamorous castle to come to as a guest, my dear.”

  Verna wondered if the woman’s husband had had a smartening effect on her before he passed, or if she was simply acting as a liberated and powerful wife would.

  “At any rate, I have just decided to execute him. Publicly. You should join me.”

  “But for what crime?” burst out Verna, forgetting her invisible shackles for a moment. “It warrants better probing!”

  “I shall take your unsolicited advice rather seriously, My Lady,” said Strovinkaya rather shrewishly, and Verna instinctively knew something was afoot.

  They walked through the twisting corridors with their sparkling suits of armor, hexagonal windows with scenery-painted glass panes, and the occasional tapestry depicting human victories over the oldfolk and the forest. After several zigzags and a flight of steps, the two women and their entourage were spat out by the castle into a well-lit and well-protected courtyard.

  Many of the local merhumans had turned up to the summons of the duchess, and were presently shouting at each other. Still in shock, Verna followed Strovinkaya to the dais and sat upon an unornamented stool to her left.

  She listened in mute despair as the woman next to her proclaimed that the merhuman on trial, one Biherl, was found guilty of sedition and slandering an honest member of the community, and would be sentenced to death for shaming Suva’s communal harmony. The man, sweating below the humid sun in the middle of the courtyard, responded that Lilek would come for her and her bloodsucking ilk. The populace outside the courtyard was silent with fear and rage.

  Strovinkaya, with a face contorted in fury, responded, “Well, where is he now?”

  Before he could respond, she gave two hand signals to her soldiers. One pitched a bucket of hot tar onto the victim, and while the man was screaming in agony, four well-armoured soldiers dragged him to a corner, where all of his limbs were tied to the very four trees Verna had been wondering about since coming here. The knot holding them together was snipped, and the courtyard echoed with two screams of rage. One, certainly, was the victim’s. The other was from Verna, who stood up, kicked her stool off the dais, then leaped down after it, running to the remains of what was defiant Biherl even moments ago. She untied his body parts by making the rope particles melt, then coaxed the wind to bring them down gently. She turned to Strovinkaya and said in a ringing voice that unfortunately didn’t hold a lot of strength, “You will hand this over to his family with as much dignity as you could give it.” Seeing that Strovinkaya was about to say something sly, Verna added, “I command it as your better!”

  She turned, about to vault over the railings and into the city, but just then, a sweaty and dishevelled messenger was half-dragged into the courtyard. The man was too far gone to realize a gruesome execution had just ended there.

  “Your Grace,” he panted, “I was charged by Lieutenant Mig... ah, that is Lieutenant Mieagi, that no update whatsoever has come in from any of the outposts on the other bank — I mean Leva, Ova and Riverside, Your Grace. He begs of you the most urgent assistance in tracing what happened to a group of at least two hundred men and mages.”

  Verna’s sense of unease spiked to doom. Something was afoot, and she then knew with frigid clarity that the days she had been familiar with for twenty years before Suva would never return. She also didn’t know this at the time, but a young thief — nay, an urchin, a nuisance to society who had no business being there — had been mentally noting everything down carefully, including her own expressions and words, and chose that moment to dip his head and melt into the crowd.