Chapter 4 #3
Waiting for the others to return, Kai took a chance and said, “One of the cloister Witches thought Tenes might have family in Palm, near the stone hill country. We’re close to that now…” Dahin looked up from the pie, his face set in an anticipatory wince, and Kai knew what the answer would be.
“Better to do it on the way back,” Dahin said, sounding mostly reasonable. “She didn’t ask to stop, did she?”
“No,” Kai admitted. While Tenes might be reluctant to ask the Witch King to set off across the continent on a hunch to find her family, she might be more willing to look now that they were so close.
But there was no telling how far the search would take them.
Kai didn’t want to suggest she do it alone; she was still in his care.
“All right,” he agreed. “We’ll talk to her about it on the way back. ”
When the coast curved into the straits, it grew more rocky, with more bluffs than marshes or beaches. It was obvious when they came within sight of the best point for the crossing.
Palm-Miahfra was a busy trading port of timbered steep-roofed buildings sprawling to either side of a wide channel that had been dug into the shore.
It formed a harbor deep enough for larger ships, and a number were anchored along its sides and at the long stone docks.
The mouth of it was further protected by a breakwater of piled rocks curving out from the shore.
In this land where reminders of war were everywhere, there were still big, slowly rotting hulks of Hierarch ships lodged in sandbars just off the narrow beaches to either side of the channel.
With the strain obviously wearing on Dahin, they had managed to convince him to let Tahren take turns guiding the raft.
She was at the steering column and as she slowed the raft to a hover, Kai asked, “Ziede, is it safe to cross?” The sky was blue and bright, the clouds white and puffy, and they were all wrapped up in scarves to keep the wind from stealing their sun hats.
The wind wasn’t as strong as it had been yesterday, but Kai had never trusted coastal weather, whichever coast it was.
Ziede’s brow furrowed as she consulted the nearest wind-devils, then she leaned out to check the weather and tide flags flapping on the tall narrow tower at the tip of the harbor’s artificial channel.
The symbols carved around its parapet indicated it was part of Palm’s Coastal Watch, which had formed at the end of the war.
Now instead of guarding against roving bands of legionaries, the Watch rescued lost traders and fishers who came to grief in sudden storms.
Dahin said impatiently, “Well?” He pointed toward the far shore, where hazy white towers were just visible against the blue sky: the city of Ancartre. “It’s not that far.”
“Storms come up fast down these straits—” Tahren began.
Dahin’s jaw went tight. “Of course, I know that—”
“Or—” Ziede cut them both off. “We could just hold our arguments until I answer Kai’s question. Yes, it is safe to cross now.”
Tahren gave Ziede an apologetic glance and Dahin subsided reluctantly.
As the Belith coast drew closer, Ziede asked, “Dahin, where should we land? Outside the city? Or near the university?” She pushed her hat back to peer toward the domes of the city center.
“It’s been decades since I’ve been here and I’m not sure I ever knew where the university was. Didn’t someone say they moved it?”
Kai caught the flicker in Dahin’s expression that said he hadn’t given this any thought yet. “I know where it is,” Dahin said. He stepped up to the raft’s steering column, not making eye contact with Tahren.
Tahren shifted aside enough to let him take the steering if he wanted to, but said, “We have no authority here, except what the Rising World lends us. Should we land first at the Assembly Hall?”
Kai could see Dahin wrestle with the urge to snap at her. But he only said, “I have authority, I’m a famous scholar.”
Kai pointed out, “The Rising World council called an emergency meeting for the news about the expedition. That means the local Cohort Leader will have been told and probably all the Rising World envoys in Ancartre have already met about it.”
There might not have been time for word of Tahren’s return and Kai and Ziede’s reappearance to arrive yet, but it wouldn’t be that many days behind them.
Rising World couriers traveled fast. Appearing officially anywhere, especially at the university which had already asked for assistance, without announcing themselves to Ancartre’s local Rising World council first, would cause a lot of comment and strife and delay.
But announcing themselves to the council would cause even more comment and strife and delay.
Tahren gave Kai an ironic look. “You have a plan.”
Tahren knew him too well. Kai said, “The Warden of Nibet House said the Tescai-lin was in Ancartre.”
“Oh!” Dahin brightened. “Do you know where?”
“Probably staying with the Enalin envoy.” The members of the Rising World didn’t keep formal envoy houses in every city, just the largest. Like the others, the Enalin envoy had probably taken a private house for the purpose.
It would be close to the Assembly, and probably well known to the local vendors. “We’ll have to ask someone.”
Before the invasion, Ancartre had been a city of white stone, of towers and domed temples dedicated to learning and art, wide processional ways lined with obelisks.
Bashasa had told Kai that his father had visited it several times in his youth, and taken inspiration from it for the school he had built in Benais-arik, wanting it to be a center of study that would draw people from all over the known world.
Early in the Hierarchs’ invasion, Ancartre had been overcome by an overland attack and used as a staging point for advancing on Palm.
The Voice of the Hierarchs had slaughtered much of the city’s population but left the buildings intact.
It was the combined forces of the surviving people of Belith, Palm, the Enalin and the Arike and the rest of the new Rising World coalition who had done the structural damage, fighting to drive the Hierarchs out.
As they flew in low toward the busy harbor, much of it had been rebuilt, the rubble cleared away.
Twin stone breakwaters with a two-story colonnade walkway atop them extended out to form a graceful half circle, like arms reaching to embrace and shelter arriving ships.
Tahren lowered the raft even more so they could fly under the curving carved arch that framed the harbor entrance, to make it clear they were not attempting to enter by stealth.
They passed over a small flotilla of western archipelago boats with colorful sails, then the long stone piers where the large and sturdy square coastal traders of Belith were anchored.
Ancartre was supposedly built of marble, and it glared white under the bright sunlight like it very well might be.
Kai had always thought privately that some of it was whitewash or limestone, but he didn’t have any proof of that.
Along the shore were white buildings with cylindrical roofs that must be warehouses, trading factors, boat-builders.
Among them were open arcades busy with people coming and going.
The cool wind brought the smell of charcoal smoke and fish.
Above the harbor were low hills covered with more two- and three-story stone structures, with neatly paved streets, then the domed temples that circled the city center.
The houses and city structures that had been rebuilt were smaller, their coloring brighter and less weathered; from the air the difference let Kai trace the path of destruction where the Rising World’s forces had pushed through from the harbor up the gentle hills toward where the Temple of Merciful Philosophy had been turned into the Hierarchs’ residence.
Firepowder and Witches like Tenes who could convince spirits to move the ground and break stone had carved that path through the City of Enlightenment.
Carved out the Hierarchs like a physician cutting out a festering boil.
The Temple of Merciful Philosophy had never been fully rebuilt; possibly the Belith felt that the Hierarchs had corrupted it, or that the slaughter of the Hierarchs inside it by the Rising World had corrupted it, or both.
The dome of the circular structure was cracked like an egg, half of it collapsed away, open to the air, and the other half was shored up with heavy timbered scaffolding.
They came down over the busy harbor front, where people were loading and unloading cargo on the docks, scraping hulls or mending nets for the fishers, walking along the broad terraces, or lying in the sun on the decks of their ships, taking a rest from work.
Some noticed the raft, pointing at it, but no one seemed panicked or upset, which Kai took as a good omen.
Tenes signed, Where should we go? Should we land on a dock?
Ziede nodded. “If there’s a place in the city for landing ascension rafts, there may be Immortal Blessed there and we don’t want to have those conversations.”
Kai pointed. “There’s an empty one.” The dock had stone pilings and should be sturdy enough. The rafts weren’t as heavy as they looked.
“Just don’t tell them who we are,” Dahin muttered as Tahren wrestled with the steering to make the raft’s descent as gentle as possible.
Kai could tell it was a struggle; ascension rafts hadn’t been designed to be subtle.
A curious crowd gathered on the broad stone walkway above the dock.
“We need to come up with some sort of story, some explanation of why we’re here. ”
Tahren said, “I honestly don’t think we do.”
Below, someone called out, “Hail the craft! Are you landing?” They spoke Old Imperial, but in the thicker accent of southern Palm.
“If you permit it.” Ziede leaned out over the rail. “Will the dock hold us?”
“Ah, it should! Land away!”