A Gathering of Wings (16 page)

“Both,” says Orion. “The shore is considered international territory.”

But Malora sees no shore. There is only a high, steep ridge of sand running parallel to the wall as far as she can see. “Where is the sea?” she asks.

“On the other side of these sand dunes,” Honus says.

They follow a well-worn path that runs between the dunes and the city wall. The noise of the marketplace has suddenly disappeared. But where is the sound of the sea? The constant murmuring that accompanied Malora’s sleep is not audible here. Instead, there is eerie silence and the air is dead.

“What happened to the sea?” Malora asks.

“It’s there,” Orion tells her. “It’s just over the crest of the dunes.”

Flocks of gray-and-white birds swirl and dive at them, pulling up at the last moment and careening away with sneering caws.

“Winged scavengers,” Dock says bitterly.

The path gradually steepens and begins to rise up the side of the dunes. Malora thinks she was hot in the marketplace. Here she swelters. Sweat drips down her back and her legs. Zephele is pale and looks faint. Orion takes his sister’s arm and supports her the last few steps to the top. Their hooves sink into the loose sand and they scramble. Malora takes Zephele’s other arm, and together she and Orion keep her upright. Neal stands at the crest of the dune, his golden hair ruffled by the wind. Honus stands beside him. Behind them, Dock huffs and curses with every step.

Finally, they achieve the summit of the dune.

“Behold, my friends,” says Honus, sweeping an arm before them, “the wine-dark sea!”

Moments before, the sun beating down on the dunes was hot and still, the air as dry-baked as a furnace. Now the wind whipping off the water flings cold moisture into Malora’s face. She licks her lips and tastes salt.

She stretches out her arms as if to embrace the whole of the watery expanse spreading out to the horizon. She imagines herself riding on horseback along the shore with the wind whipping her hair.

Whereas moments ago the sea was dark, now it is blue. It is a blue different from any that Malora has ever known. River water is muddy, or it is green, but it is almost never blue, and if it is, it isn’t quite
this
blue. This is a blue that is alive and moving, running at a rapid clip. Rows of waves speed toward the shore for as far as she can see in both directions, foamy and swirling, like the wind-tossed manes of galloping horses.

“Well, ladies,” Orion says, his eyes moving from one to the other, “what do you think?”

Zephele huddles, clasping her elbows and shivering. “It frightens me,” she says in a small voice.

“Ha! You would do well to fear it,” Honus says, “for its tides are fearfully powerful.”

Neal shakes his head slowly. “I don’t mind looking at it. I don’t mind eating the fish that swim in it. And there is nothing like a sea breeze to clear your head after a night of carousing. But you would not catch me in it or on it or under it or crossing it anytime soon.”

Malora says, “I
will
swim in it before I leave this place.”

This declaration is met by a brief silence.

“I think not,” says Orion with a nervous laugh.

“Why would you even
want
to?” Neal says.

Malora says, “Let’s get closer,” as she leads the way down the steep path toward the sea.

“I’ll be staying right here,” says Dock, arms folded across his chest, hooves planted in the sand.

“Suit yourself, old man!” Neal calls. “We’ll meet you back at the inn.”

Malora picks her way down the path. The dunes are more solid on this side, with boulders and grass poking up like sharp little swords. Further down the shoreline, Honus stops and points. She doesn’t see at first, and then suddenly she does: there are stone structures tucked in among the rocks. “The homes of the sealies and merfolk,” he says.

Malora watches as the sea boils into the doors and windows and then pulls away with a rattle and clatter of stones.

“Twice a day, their houses are completely submerged by the tides,” Honus says. “That’s when they return home. The rest of the time they spend in the sea.”

“Oh, look in the water!” says Zephele, clapping delightedly. “How adorable! They’re so tiny. Are they children?”

“Sealie pups and merkits,” Honus says, nodding. Little figures wriggle about in the shallows. There are crude baskets cradled in their arms. They are gathering up sopping hanks of yellow and pink and blue and green and filling their baskets.

“What are they doing?” Malora asks.

“Harvesting seaweed to sell in the marketplace,” Honus explains. “It is very healthful. Some of it is edible. Other kinds fertilize crops. The sea is the cradle of all life. It nurtures just as it destroys.”

A few of the children pause to stare back at the strangers. The pups have human faces and arms and shoulders but their skin is black with a bluish sheen and they have stout torsos that split into legs ending in short fins that look like a fat dog’s paws. The kits’ tails are covered in scales, some golden, others tending more toward green and blue. As they draw nearer, Malora sees that both pups and kits have long, muscular necks with gills running behind their tiny budlike ears.

“I’ve always been vaguely revolted by those gills,” Orion says thoughtfully.

“I know what you mean. They call to mind bloodless incisions,” Honus says. “I think it’s their cold-bloodedness that puts us off. Most of the rest of us are warm-blooded. Even the Ka are equally as comfortable on land as in water. But these hibes are, in the truest sense of the word,
Other
.”

The shore is steep where the waves sweep in. While the centaurs stay where the footing is more level, Malora and Honus walk closer to the water.

“This is where the treasures fetch up,” Honus explains.

Malora finds a fragile spiral object and holds it in the palm of her hand. It looks like a flower made of delicate bone. “Is this a seashell, too?” she asks.

“Yes. It is no longer occupied, so now it is yours, if you like.”

Malora slips it into her pouch.

They make their way slowly, Honus bending to pick up a seashell or a brightly colored stone to place in his own pouch. Malora walks with her eyes on the ground, as greedy for sea treasures as Zephele was for items in the marketplace.

The next time she looks up, she is surprised to see that the dunes have disappeared and that they and the centaurs are now walking on a flat, even stretch of sand.

“Around the next bend,” Honus says, “is the port.”

They come to a high stone wall with steps running up the side. Malora and Honus climb up them, and from the top of the wall Malora stares down into water that looks black and fathomless and sucks against the mossy sides of the wall. Then she gazes up to where the arch of Kahiro soars high overhead. Under the arch, boats and ships bob at their moorings.

“The boats enter and leave beneath this archway,” Honus explains.

“I’ve never seen a structure so high,” she says.

Honus replies, “The wall is even higher on the sea side of Kahiro. That is so that ships with very tall masts can sail beneath the great port arch. It’s high tide now. If we wait here long enough, maybe we’ll see it.”

“What will we see?” Zephele asks, as the centaurs join them on the pier.

“Wait!” Honus rests one hand on Malora’s arm and points
upward. She sees a tiny figure on the top of the arch. The idea of standing up there makes Malora’s head reel. As she watches, the tiny figure launches itself into the air and dives gracefully down, down, down, landing with a neat splash in the pool beneath them.

When the Ka’s head bobs up, Zephele bursts into applause. “Oh, excellent!”

“This is the Kahiro Pool. As you can imagine, the water is very deep here,” Honus says. “Shall we walk a ways out onto the pier?”

The pier is covered with dark green seaweed and juts out into the water. Threaded through iron rods sunk into the pier is a long mossy rope.

“Grab on to the rope,” Neal instructs them. “The footing is dicey. Farther out, it’s treacherous.”

The rope feels cold and slimy in Malora’s hand. The sea sloshes over the pier. White-lipped and determined, the centaurs hang on to the rope and pick their way along. On the other side of the pool, another pier runs parallel to this one. Ka tads leap from it into the water and haul themselves out on long ropes.

“These piers are known as the Arms of Kahiro,” Honus says.

The Backbone of Heaven, rising up from the center of the harbor, looks smaller by day but is alive with nesting seabirds. Malora begins to feel slightly queasy. The water, which had looked so blue and inviting from the dunes, is black and afloat with objects rising and falling with sickening regularity, including long, sinister tendrils of seaweed.

“Still want to go swimming, pet?” Neal asks.

When Malora doesn’t respond, Orion says, “It’s not what you see that bothers you so much as what you don’t see.” His pale eyes have darkened, absorbing the water’s darkness.

“What’s that?” Zephele asks suddenly.

They all break off gazing into the water to see Zephele pointing to another rock slightly to the east of the Backbone of Heaven. It rides lower in the water and has some sort of structure occupying most of it.

“That ziggurat on the small island?” Honus says. “That, my dears, is the Beehive, the most famous of all the Houses of Romance. A boat leaves from the end of this pier on a regular basis to deliver customers to and from the Beehive.”

“Well,” says Zephele, turning huffily away, “the less said about
that
the better. I believe I’ve had enough of the sea
and
Beehives. I’m tired. Are you tired, Malora?”

“Yes,” says Malora. “Let’s go back to the inn.”

“An excellent idea,” Neal says.

They all turn around slowly on the pier and work their way back to the shore, passing beneath the arch and proceeding along the promenade. Dockworkers, Ka and burly Bovians, are loading and unloading goods from the ships. Overhead, nets of cargo sway.

Mount Kheiron has a small river port where flatboats and barges load and unload, but that is a modest enterprise compared to the Port of Kahiro, with its forest of clinking masts. The ships, hulls creaking as they rise and fall on the swells, smell of the sea and of their cargos: spices and oils and hides, olive oil and wine and oranges. As Malora’s nose takes it all in, she gets hints of the lands from which these ships have sailed, crowded waterfronts with white-capped mountains
rising from the mist, tiger-eyed hibes padding along the decks, monkey-tailed hibes scaling the rigging. The decks and rigging here are all empty of crew.

“Where is everyone?” Malora asks.

“Probably at the Beehive,” Neal says with a bark of laughter. “Who knows how long they have been at sea? Oh, you wouldn’t catch me on board one of these things. The sea’s no place for a centaur.”

They leave the port and enter onto the wide main street, moving against the tide of the crowd, which is headed toward the port.

“Where are they all going?” Malora asks.

“Believe it or not, to watch the sun set into the sea,” Honus says. “It is a daily ritual here. They bring beverages and simple foods and stand on the piers. They watch the sealies swim out with their torches to light up the Backbone of Heaven. And when the sun finally drops into the sea, they cheer and applaud as if it were a dramatic performance put on for their amusement.”

“Painters depict the sunset at Kahiro and sell them in the artists’ aisle at the marketplace. These sunsets on parchment are a very popular souvenir of Kahiro,” Orion adds.

“Can we watch the sun set into the sea some night?” Zephele asks.

“I will think about it,” Neal says.

“What is this?” Malora asks.

They are passing a building twice the size of their inn, made of rose-colored blocks of stones and topped by a polished gold dome that is easily ten times larger than the dome on the temple of Kheiron.

“The Empress’s palace,” Neal says.

A sudden blare of trumpets pierces the air and sends the crowd scurrying. Pedestrians grab hold of one another and haul each other into the shelter of doorways and porticos. Malora pulls Zephele to one side of the street while Orion, Honus, and Neal wind up being shoved by the crowd to the other. Neal is struggling to make his way across to join Malora and Zephele when two lines of Ka come down the street. Clad in green and blue loincloths and matching headdresses, they bang their serpent sticks on the pavement, linking their arms and forming a double barricade to keep the crowds on both sides from surging back into the streets.

“What’s happening?” Malora asks.

Zephele hugs herself happily. “Who
knows
? But isn’t it
exciting
!” She wiggles her fingers teasingly at Neal across the road. He scowls and gestures to both of them to stay where they are.

Malora turns to watch a procession of Ka in golden loincloths holding two long, ribbon-wrapped poles bearing a big gilded box festooned with fresh flowers, its sides covered with brightly beaded curtains. Through the swaying beads, Malora catches sight of a single sheKa within, perched on a golden throne. She wears a golden headdress and a purple veil over her lower face. Hands folded demurely on her lap, her huge, moist amphibious eyes stare haughtily ahead.

“It’s the litter of the Empress of the Ka. It is just as it has been described to me, but I never dreamed we’d actually see it. Oh, we are so lucky!” Zephele says breathlessly. “Did you see her?”

Malora nods.

“I did, too, and she’s absolutely divine, is she not?” Zephele cries.

Malora smiles at her friend. Zephele’s former intolerance seems to have vanished. The horns blare again and the crowd’s roar of approval follows the litter as it files past Zephele and Malora. Behind the Empress’s litter are more Ka, these wearing red loincloths, some holding horns to their fleshy lips, others beating drums strapped to their slender hips.

Malora reaches out for Zephele’s hand and, groping around, turns to find a bovina standing where Zephele had been moments before. She is waving a small blue and green pennant and cheering with the others. Her heart hammering, Malora’s eyes skitter over the crowd. Zephele is nowhere to be seen. Malora turns to signal to her companions across the street, but the parade blocks her view of them. She pushes her way back through the crowd, searching for her friend. Finally, she picks up the faintest trace of Zephele’s wild jasmine scent. Malora tracks it along the pavement, shoving aside anyone in her way. Then, over the din of the crowd and the music, she hears Zephele’s voice.