Beneath Ceaseless Skies #80 Read online

  Issue #80 • Oct. 20, 2011

  “Held Close in Syllables of Light,” by Rose Lemberg

  “To the Gods of Time and Engines, a Gift,” by Dean Wells

  For more stories and Audio Fiction Podcasts, visit

  http://beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/

  HELD CLOSE IN SYLLABLES OF LIGHT

  by Rose Lemberg

  The Penareh docks had been my favorite place as a child. The walkways above the harbor were planked in golden wood, lustrous with a thousand years of painted designs—shells and outmoded galleys, water serpents, gears. Maintained by the power of my ancestors’ deepnames, the designs did not fade or tarnish under the heavy traffic but mellowed with age, almost translucent, a whisper beneath the workmen’s feet.

  Under the paved walkways the sand too was golden, even more delicately chiseled—every grit perfect. I used to shift it through my fingers, looking for petrified starfish or pieces of wild Taryca emerald tangled in the seaweed—pieces I would later drag to my mother’s workshop to weld into my first clumsy designs.

  If my mother wasn’t away trading with her Khana allies, she’d be at the workshop—arrow-straight on the bench, peering at some intricate piece of machinery. With my mind’s eye I would see her two deepnames engaged and poised over her head, their magic held ready to manipulate the pieces too delicate for her tools. Sometimes my mother would sing while she worked. She sang in Niyazi, always the same song about a dark maiden who drew her power from the earth, a maiden spurned by the man she loved. But it was she who had rejected my father.

  I had seen him earlier in the day. He came to bid me a good journey, my first journey alone over the squall to Niyaz. To pass my heirship rite I would trade there, on my own, in my mother’s name. He would no longer guest at her house, so he came to me at the docks, where the golden light of the wood cast his face into intricate shadows. He looked so handsome—perfect olive skin and slightly slanted almond eyes, not tall but powerfully built. Some years ago he took to growing his hair, and now it was almost as long as mine, hanging straight to mid-back. It looked good on him. Everything looked good on him, but it wasn’t his looks that made people’s heads turn when he passed—it was his deepnames, his power, never on display, always just there, dazzling like a stormcloud around his head.

  Even those without the gift of magic could feel it—a dull throbbing headache at his approach, the air hanging heavy with stultifying moisture. It was his power that had called me to him, to the docks. His face was grave, but his eyes crinkled when he saw me. When I was littler, he’d go on one knee to greet me face to face, but now my eyes were level with his. “Vendelin, daughter,” he said, formal, always too formal these days. “I come to wish you luck in your venture.”

  So much pain in him. I only had one deepname, a two-syllable, not the most powerful, but my friend Taemin had taught me to use that to my advantage. Long names for mind-healing, the craft he had learned from his father; and so I could sense mind-pain. Perhaps I was too young for such knowledge, how people’s lives grew fossilized with burdens, like a piece of Taryca emerald strangled in petrified debris. And unlike Taemin, I didn’t have a healer’s gift. I couldn’t heal my father’s hurts; the many secrets he carried, some concealed, others opened to me; but I could embrace him, and I did. “Thanks. I’ll be fine.”

  He pushed me away from him. “I have been to Niyaz in my youth, Vendelin. It is not a place for a young woman.”

  “Mother went many times,” I said, “and she is fine.”

  His mouth twisted. “No. When she courted me, she was already wounded. She still hurts, and I....”

  His hands curled into fists, and I turned away from my father’s weakness. The perfect family. His dream that never was. Always he wanted to fix things. But not all things could be fixed by the application of power. Some could only be further broken. “I’ll be all right, father.”

  “They don’t let women take deepnames in Niyaz.”

  “I only have one.” Yes, my mother had drilled that into me, how in Niyaz a woman should be doubly careful never to show too much ability. It chilled me, yes, for all I hid it from my father. And when my mother had warned me to stay away from the Shahniyaz, her mind twisted like watersnakes, and my mouth had gone sour.

  Still, south I had to go. House Penareh prospered from the Niyazi goods, and to be confirmed its heir I would trade with that city’s ruler. But better indirectly. My mother’s Khana allies would help me, the trading folk that lived among Niyazi. “I’ll be safe in the Khana quarter. I’ve been there twice before.”

  “Under your mother’s protection.” He frowned. “It is a fine idea to hold off until your mind is more mature, but you are mature enough. You should take a second deepname now.”

  More power had always been my father’s answer. I didn’t want raw strength, I wanted something intricate, specialized, like my mother’s magic, or Taemin’s. Not a weapon, but a tool to make wonders. “Now that would be very offensive to the Niyazi.”

  His brows knitted. I had offended him. “Don’t think about what is and what isn’t pleasing to others, Vendelin. Do what you want, what you find right in your heart.”

  “Yes, father.” He would never change. For all he surrounded himself with artists, innovators, wonder-makers, he wouldn’t even contemplate a different path. But what good was his might if it couldn’t keep my mother close, couldn’t make his children follow in his steps?

  I waited for him to say something predictable, maybe try to convince me to take a bodyguard along, but he said, “Remember this when your moment comes. You may be your mother’s heir, but you are also my daughter. Rage will feed you. And do not let anyone trample you.”

  I vented an exasperated sigh. “This is a trading venture, not a war!”

  “As you say.” We embraced; he was formal again, armored in distance. My mind was already away.

  * * *

  My cabin on the Cormorant was smaller than the one I had shared with my mother on our previous journeys, but the simple lines and the well-oiled wood of it pleased me. I placed my trading box beneath the single round window. Its glass was fogged; I drew on my deepname and cleaned it, but it wasn’t much of an improvement—all I could see was the deck.

  I kept resolutely to my room. The sailorwomen didn’t welcome idle gawkers, and it wouldn’t do to offend. House Bodumi competed with Penareh in the southern trade, but it was the Bodumi seacraft that could speed or stall us in our ventures.

  I spent my time rereading the letters my Khana friend, Sureh, had sent me. I had seen her last when we were both eleven. Her letters were all about trade and customs, but her words made me giggle—and she tugged the tails of her letters up and doodled little gears on the margins, just for me. The Khana belief forbid the depiction of living creatures, but some of Sureh’s gears had little eyes penned inside. I hadn’t made close friends with the mainland nobles at school; and now my brother and I had quarreled over Taemin, and Taemin was far away. Sureh.... I traced the gears with my finger, imagining her smiling face behind the paper.

  On the sixth day, a messenger came to me from the captain to summon me to her steering station. I threw a quilted half-coat over my shoulders and went out to the deck, blinking against the salt and the reflected sunlight of the waves.

  Above me, the sails bloomed red, painted with traditional yellow Birds. The goddess was a cormorant for the Bodumi, a partridge for the rest of us on the Coast, a quail in the capital, a hawk in Niyaz, a pelican in Burri. Taemin and I made a game of it once, laughing and shouting out Birds to match the imaginary countries we would visit: bald-necked buzzard! cockatoo! zebra titmouse!

  Captain Bodumi was at the helm. Her t
hree deepnames were engaged: a two-syllable tested the water, another two-syllable aligned the ship’s body, and the strongest name, the one-syllable, controlled the wind. Another sailorwoman was there, talking to the captain; they saw me but didn’t react. If my mother had chosen a Bodumi husband, I would be apprenticed now, learning the namelore to steer a ship across the currents. My mother had courted my father instead.

  The sailor extended her names into air and water to take over the steering, and the captain pulled her own names into her mind and walked towards me. Her face was too broad to be beautiful, its Coastal olive coloring darkened to harshness, but her eyes were bright and angry as a seabird’s.

  “Captain Bodumi.”

  “Penareh.” She didn’t call me by my first name or give my title. Not a good sign. “Now. Did you set this up?”

  I clasped my hands behind my back and breathed. When I spoke, my answer was my mother’s, not my father’s. “Forgive me, Captain Bodumi, but I know not what you mean.”

  She grabbed me by the shoulder and led me below deck to her cabin. It was cramped: two burly sailorwomen stood guard over a heap of stained white clothes and ropes.

  “I mean this stowaway,” the captain said.

  At her sign the women hoisted the heap—the person—up to a kneeling position. Small, with mouse-bright eyes, curly brown hair, trembling lower lip, and startling birch-white skin that marked his mainland origins.

  Oh, Taem, what in Bird’s feathery cloaca....

  What was he doing here? The school was out for the Summering, but still, what was he doing alone, away from home and my idiot brother? Hiding, in danger—Taemin, who wouldn’t even go on his own for a walk on the beach, who still slept with a candlebulb in his room.... Something must have happened.

  “A man on my ship,” the captain said—ill luck among the matriarchal Bodumi. “He says he is your servant.”

  “He’s not my servant!”

  “Then pitch him overboard.”

  I willed my face to smoothness. “You misunderstand me, Captain. This is my friend Taemin, from the house Kekeri.” My father and his had been lovers since before we were born, long before they both married. You touch this boy, and my father will make quick work of the house Bodumi.

  “I only live in the house,” Taem whispered. “I’m not a noble.” He was rarely comfortable speaking up, especially among strangers. And now tears veiled his eyes; he was close to a breakdown. “My father serves lord Kekeri,” he said stubbornly, “and I serve the lady Vendelin.”

  The captain stared at Taem for a while. No doubt the name Kekeri had set her to thinking. I did not regret speaking it. My father was not my crutch, but Taem was here now and needed my protection.

  With her lips curled up in distaste, the captain spoke. “Very well. Keep your servant friend in your quarters, Penareh. Pray that your mother’s Khana will be just as understanding of a man’s presence among them, because I am not taking him back for you.”

  She motioned me out of the cabin, and my insides lurched. My father’s name might have forced the Captain’s hand, but it would help me not at all among the Khana.

  * * *

  We ended up in my cabin. It was too early to speak. I perched on my berth. He cried himself dry first, leaning into my knees; next he tidied himself up, and then he ate and ate, fastidious and furtive as a mouse. I watched him, waiting for all of it to pass.

  “Did something happen?” I asked at last.

  He shook his head mutely. I wasn’t sure whether to believe him.

  “Then why, Taem?”

  He whispered, “You shouldn’t travel alone.”

  “How did you think you’d help me? No, don’t cry.” I stroked his curly hair. “No, really, did you think I’d need a mind healer for my trading? You’re not a bodyguard, you don’t know anything about the Niyazi....”

  “I know enough!” He looked straight up at me, no longer whispering. “Do you know what they do to women who take deepnames?” He sniffled. “Their names are destroyed!”

  What makes you think I do not know this? But in truth, I was glad for him; he was always so earnest I couldn’t begrudge him anything, not even his affected servitude.

  “Don’t you worry your pretty head, Taem. I know what I’m doing.” Or knew, at least, before he oh so helpfully came along. “My mother’s Khana friends will shelter me and bring my goods before the Shahniyaz. The Khana may live in the city, but their women take deepnames, and the Niyazi still trade with them.” Yes, but the Khana would never host a man.

  Oh, for Bird’s sake. Taemin’s gloom was getting to me. Surely I’d think of something.

  “Right, want to see what’s in my trading chest?”

  He perked up at once. It made me feel better. I whispered my deepname in my mind to unlock the guard of invisibility I had stretched over the wrought iron chest. Its lid was a puzzle lock fashioned after the seven great Coastal houses. The first puzzle was a watersnake, the sigil of my foremother Ranra Kekeri, who brought our people to the Coast. I put the serpent together from interlocking pieces that slithered slyly upon the surface. Once locked, the watersnake spun, broke into new puzzle pieces, slightly smaller than before.

  With practiced fingers I put together the lion, the scorpion, and the rest of them, down to the last—the apple tree. Taem watched, bright-eyed, as the lid swung aside, revealing my trading goods.

  “Geckos!” he cried out, and so they were, golden-hued lizards with sleek articulated limbs and agate eyes and hinged jaws that could open very wide indeed.

  “The Niyazi have been suffering from locusts,” I explained. “The desert swarming locust has no natural enemy, but these geckos should be pretty effective, I hope. I designed them myself!” I smiled warm encouragement at him as he stretched a slim finger to touch a lizard’s golden tail.

  “They are so very beautiful, Vendelin....” His voice was a whisper again, and I felt his pain surface, a wave in the small harbor of his chest. I had planned to show him the other compartments, but now I locked the puzzle lid and drew a breath.

  “Now. Tell me.”

  He sniffled, shoulders hunched, a single dark curl trailing down his bent neck. Oh yes, I could guess what this was all about. “What did Laukur do now?”

  Taem’s head hung even lower. “Nothing.”

  My baby brother was an ass.

  Taem turned away from me, stared blindly out of the small window. Beyond it, the deck had darkened. Sometimes as a child I’d gaze up at the stars and think they’d be, up close, these giant fiery balls made entirely of names more ancient than the land, more mighty than my father. Syllables of molten light.

  “He said I was an odd little weakling and that he didn’t care if I went away forever. Happy?”

  And so you ran away to me. Damn Laukur. Damn the school. Damn the mainland. People there had guano for brains. To be a plebe was shameful; to have a long name was shameful; for a man to be with a man was shameful, especially if one was a plebe, especially if one had a weak name, especially if one was shy and didn’t take the lead.... Unwritten rules that made a kind of a twisted sense if one tucked feathers into one’s behind, stood on the head, and tilted one’s toes to the south in a straight line. And yes, these rules had made perfect sense to my brother, for all he had liked Taemin very much indeed before they’d gone to the school. “No. I’m not happy.”

  “I... I’m sorry, Vendelin, I’m sorry....”

  Oh, great, and now he thought I wouldn’t want him either.

  I stretched my hand to wipe his tears, turned his face to me, pallid and marred with his pain under candlebulb light. “Hush. You’re with me now. Just do as I say. And do not speak... in Niyaz, they don’t understand Coastal families, yes?” His eyes were closed, but he was listening; so attentive, quiet, that my heart broke for him. “They also forbid for men to be with men, and women with women....” I wasn’t sure what the Khana permitted. Their customs might well be different. Still, better to play it safe. “Just don’t spe
ak of it, right?”

  He nodded, once. I let his chin go. Damn it all. Damn my father. When he’d returned to the Coast, he’d built a new home for his perfect family, a great house blazing with deepnames, supported with pillars of blue ebony and multicolored spun glass, strewn with Niyazi carpets, perfumed with marsh flower and gray rose. He wanted to fill it with wise adults and brilliant power-hungry children, all perfect for him, reflecting him. I missed it still, the family that never was.

  “Go to sleep, Taemin.”

  I covered up on my berth, but the air was too chilly for comfort. Taem stretched below me on the floor, his head almost touching my trade chest. He sighed once, then engaged his names. Slowly, breath by breath, he built a grid of woven light above him, feeble, intricate. It looked warm.

  I couldn’t do anything like that.

  As a child, I’d often visited Taem’s father in his hospice at the capital. He’d heal the poor that came to him, for free; his long names, thin and barely visible, entered the minds of his patients so gently they felt no pain. I wanted—yes, I wanted something like that, a power that arose from weakness like a very thin knife that cuts away hurt, not life. But I couldn’t even take a long name. My stupid mind was shaped for brute force.

  If I had a longer name now, I could mimic Taemin’s blanket. With a short one, I could at least make a contained fire. A two-syllable was respectable for a person my age; only Taem knew how much of a struggle it had been for me to resist taking a shorter name. I could take it now, and be warm, if I gave up my dream of crafting mastery.

  I would stay cold that night.

  * * *

  We reached the southern harbor a mere four days later, and passed under the great Seagate of Niyaz, an enormous, sinuous arc chiseled out of the hollow bones and gold-streaked ivory of the mythical razu beast. The gate was carved into roses, wound with name-garlands that sparkled even in broad daylight; at night, I remembered, they flared, a necklace at the throat of the city, summoning ships from near and far to trade here under the glorious rule of the Shahniyaz.