The unbalancing, p.4
The Unbalancing, page 4
“Erígra. Come again?”
“I will, Keeper.” They slipped out of my house as if they were running away.
Lilún
I rushed through the crowd in the inner courtyard, hoping to escape without being noticed, but the esteemed Dorod and their crew intercepted me.
“I heard she sent people away to remain one-on-one with you. You can’t leave me hanging!” Dorod laughed, and their fellows grinned at me. Someone once again made an attempt to thrust a drink into my hand, but I motioned it away. All I wanted was to go home, where I could feel things in safety. But Dorod had been kind to me earlier, and I didn’t want to brush them off in recompense for their kindness. The gossip was all in good fun. I figured I would sooner be on my way if I just responded.
“She, um, asked me a question,” I said.
Dorod waited for more, but then their face lit up in understanding. “And did you indulge?”
I shook my head. “I’m not that fast.”
Dorod laughed; a deep belly laugh. “She is a rake, our Ranra. We do enjoy her.” Then they peered into my face. “Something eats at you.”
Something about Dorod made me trust them. It was, perhaps, the motion of the brass tokens in their hair, the melodious jangling—calming and fascinating at once. Deer and fish and bear. Dorod, too, was striking—not commonly beautiful, but they had this rugár handsomeness, a bigness that I associated with those ichidar who were at the same time women and men.
I spoke, stubbornly. “It’s how I was only allowed to approach her, you know, because of my looks. It doesn’t sit well with me.”
“You are good-looking, Erígra,” Dorod said. “You cannot deny it.”
“If I decided not to bleach my hair, not to change my earth-tending gear, I wouldn’t have made it past the gate.”
“Love,” said Dorod, “I went to listen to you recite your work three times this last winter. I listened to you read in your earth-tending gear, your shoes wet with muck, your hair uncombed, and it wasn’t just because I love poetry.”
I wasn’t sure if this was such a compliment, that Dorod came to listen to me because of my looks—if they were even saying that. I wasn’t sure.
Dorod continued. “Any adult carrying two and more deepnames was admitted tonight, along with many others who wanted to come. Nobody was turned away because of their looks. The more talented you are, the better you look, eh? Muck and all.” They winked at me. “But I see you are troubled. I’ll let you go—or would you like us to escort you home?”
I refused their kind offer and took my leave, then made my way out of the gate and through the crowded streets. It was darker now, and the revelers, many quite drunk, jostled me. The pressure of bodies, the festival clothes, the smell of sweat and alyta perfume, the joy that emanated from the people, the kisses and moans from every courtyard and rooftop where revelers gathered to share their pleasure—all this made my head pound. This wasn’t for me. I wasn’t adar, I could imagine taking a lover—but I just didn’t move at the speed everybody else seemed to be moving, in Gelle-Geu. The Keeper went from discoursing about the Sputtering Star underwave to would you like to be touched in all of five breaths, and I was too buzzy to even contemplate this abrupt transition, let alone form an answer. Perhaps I was too odd to ever find a lover. There was no point of looking for some abstract lover before I could think more about Ranra, and I couldn’t think about Ranra when there was so much noise.
Finally home, I took off my festival clothes and walked out to the inner courtyard, full of night-flowering vines and the murmur of water. I had always known I was different from others, and people had known this, too. As a child, I would curl upon myself sometimes, and rock on the floor until the buzzing grew softer. The healer-keepers came, and told my fathers not to worry so much. “They just need the world to be quieter, and less bright. Can you make them a comfortable place to relax?” What I wanted was a pool, so dads Veseli and Meron had labored for weeks to create my quiet place, and dad Genet planted the first vines, and taught me how to tend them.
I immersed myself in that outdoor pool now and floated there, unthinking, under the slowly rotating stars, until the buzzing in my mind receded. The water had cooled off by then, and I found myself shivering, so I called on my two deepnames—just said them gently in my mind—and combined their magic to heat the water. I was told that one should not be able to do this with just the two deepnames, but it wasn’t too hard, yet another sign of my unwanted ability.
With my deepname configuration engaged, my magical senses felt clearer. Belowground, beneath the noise of the city, more subtle now that it was night, I perceived the golden glow of the land’s deep structure—the magical naming grid, the weave upon which all the known lands rested. The grid felt disturbed to me, trembling. From afar, in the sea, the Sputtering Star tossed in its unquiet sleep, and its rumblings rattled the grid. Even the Mother Mountain’s fiery roots seemed unbalanced. I wondered how much this buzz had disturbed me, too, without knowing. Barely a year left, Semberí had said. Ranra had never met Semberí, but she, too, knew something.
This was getting worse.
Ranra
Deep in the night the partying finally died, or at least moved indoors. I, too, was indoors, having gotten my fill, more or less, in the gardens. I had looked forward to all of that earlier, but Erígra’s sudden appearance and just as sudden retreat had sapped much of the pleasure from the revels. I told myself that there was no point in moping when there was partying to be had. I could mope later, after all, when I was alone.
Now that I was alone, my desire to mope had evaporated. It was late enough that I should’ve just gone to sleep, but the bond I had formed with my star filled me with jittery, still-unfamiliar energy. I had drunk some quince wine, but it did little to soothe me. I itched to do things.
I started messing with the deepname charts that lay strewn on the table, but got no closer to any answers. The star, a ball of pure magic made of thousands and thousands of deepnames all woven together, lay dormant beneath the wave. I had formed a bond with it through ceremonies. How was this possible unless the star was consenting? It was a being of power more vast than the isles, and my magic was human. If it wanted to reject me, I would be dead. No. For a thousand years, starkeepers here did the same thing—ceremonies to prepare the starkeeper’s mind and soothe the Slumbering Star who had just lost a human starkeeper; and then, the activation of deepnames, the slow descent of one’s magic below the wave. Strengthened by the ceremony and all my knowledge of starlore, I had reached down, beneath the wave, and I was received. It felt—less than an embrace, to be sure, but an anchoring.
For forty generations it had been like this. Except for Semberí, every one of our starkeepers had gone through the same rituals. Semberí had acquired the star directly from Bird.
Pluck it. Erígra had planted doubt in my mind. Erígra doubted that the star was consenting, but they themself did nothing, just like all the others. A perfect pastime, to sit and stare and wait for Ranra Crow to make a mistake, to be mocked and whispered about to the neighbors.
No. Stop. Erígra wasn’t like that, and if they were, I didn’t know it yet.
I sucked air through my nostrils, steadying myself. This . . . this thing that happened sometimes, these thoughts did not feel this bad since— since Soli had left me. And who was to blame for that? I mucked it up with Erígra too. I myself and nobody else was to blame. Erígra wanted to talk about starlore, and I pounced like a cat at a ball of yarn, without even asking if they had a preference.
As if on cue, Soli—Veruma Soli—entered the room, carrying armfuls of books. She was a tall, athletic woman, her dun hair bleached by the sun. We’d been lovers on and off since we were nineteen, and I trusted her judgment in everything but her choice of lovers, myself included. She nodded at me, then dumped the volumes onto the table. “Here. I found your books. Now go to sleep, Ranra, you’re drunk.”
“I’m not drunk, Soli.” She made a face, and I corrected myself. “Veruma. I’m not drunk, I just . . .” Keep forgetting that you asked me not to call you by your inner name anymore, eh? Yes, it hurt that she left me, but this didn’t give me the right to misname Veruma, now that the permission to use her inner name had been revoked. “Sorry. I’m sorry.” To cover up my feelings, I plucked the Starkeeper’s Primer from the pile. I had to have read this book a hundred times. There was nothing in it to help me.
“You say you’re not drunk,” Veruma said, “But I saw you drink more than your share, and you’ve been awake for days.”
“I’m awake, I’m alive, and I need to plucking figure out how to fix this,” I snarled. “And yet again here are the five hundred different ways to consult with your star,” I shoved the book under Veruma’s nose. “Here’s a chart, there’s a chart, turn your configuration this way, form a straight angle, form an acute angle, but none of them say what angle to form when your star is asleep and drifting from one Bird-pecked nightmare to another . . .”
“Ever since you bonded to your star,” said Veruma sagely, “you have become even more unsufferable.”
At least you have the courtesy to mock me to my face. My spoken response was barely better. “Yes? So why are you here, Veruma? Go to sleep.”
Veruma bent over and kissed me on the forehead. “It’s dark. Everybody is in bed. Your poet is not coming back.”
“This wasn’t about Erígra,” I said. Or about you. Or about both of you. Or about me. Eh. “They talked so dangerously and so deeply, and all I wanted was . . .” Wind my hands through their hair and tilt their head back and devour that mouth of theirs, with which they spoke such things that made my blood run hot and cold at once. “They said they would come back.”
“Tonight?”
I shook my head. “They took offense at something.” Something about the guards admitting them only because they were beautiful. I shouldn’t have ever said this to the guards, not even in jest. Not everybody knew me, and I wasn’t just among friends anymore, the whole of the people looked at me now. The thought made me shudder. “I’ll explain it to them if they ever come back.”
“And the other trysts did not take it off your mind.”
“No.” Veruma knew me too well, for too long.
I twisted the charts this way and that. “It’s not about trysts, it’s the way Erígra spoke about my star, as if they could’ve been its keeper, as if they already knew all of its secrets, and judged me.”
Veruma’s eyebrows climbed up. “I did not realize that you wanted to be judged.”
“I don’t want to be judged.” I had accused Erígra of criticizing me, but now my mind veered into a new direction. “I also don’t want to mess this up. If I’m messing up, then by Bird I hope someone will tell me.”
“And if someone will tell you, will you listen? Or will you think they’re judging you?”
Why did Veruma need to wheedle me now? I took a steadying breath, then pushed the largest chart toward her. “Look. What do you see?”
“A star of deep blue, charted to show its observable deepnames,” said Veruma levelly. “Magical geometrists have been diving into the sea to chart this for centuries, until a full mapping was obtained. This is the master chart made by Ulár Viyann ten months ago . . .” she trailed off. “You know this chart as well as I do; here are the red markings you made yourself, and a few expletives on the reverse.”
“I am missing something, Veruma, something obvious. Ulár monitors the star and updates the charts. The nightmares are intensifying, the earthquakes . . . yet the master chart is ten months old.”
“Ah, no, he keeps separate charts, which he updates with his monthly observations. The master chart is updated yearly, so it will be updated in two months or so . . .”
I growled, “Pluck the goddess, what? Yearly?!”
“By the orders of Starkeeper Terein, who said it was enough to . . .”
My choices here were to continue to rage, or calm down so I could do something.
I spoke in what I hoped was a level tone. “Look, Terein is gone. His soul has been taken up by Bird herself. I, Ranra Kekeri, am Keeper now. I need to know what’s going on. And not yearly. Daily.”
“Fine,” Veruma said. “I’ll wake Ulár.”
“No, by Bird don’t wake Ulár. I’ll see his charts in the morning.” I rolled up the useless, outdated master chart. Terein must have known something was off, and we kept telling him, didn’t we? But Terein didn’t want to see the charts. He was avoiding.
Suddenly I had an idea. I got up and looked around for my korob. “We’re going sailing.”
“Sailing into bed,” said Veruma, but she couldn’t have been serious. I got my korob, not the dress one I wore for my ascension ceremony, but the good green one, padded and worn into comfort over years of sailing. I fastened the two belts. There was something comforting about putting on a korob. A tradition as old as the archipelago. It said I was ready to face whatever the sea and the wind might bring. Veruma, at least, did not argue.
Soon enough we were striding out of Keeper’s House, out of the dimmed and exhausted gardens, through the gates which were unguarded, at this time of night, by anything but my own magical protections. The life in the isles was abundant and prosperous, and not many people bothered with crimes; those of the thrill-seekers who could break my protections were all known to me.
The wind was brisk, rising up from the sea with its insistence of salt and wide-open expanses of water. The cloying heaviness of the night sloughed off me. I whooped and thrust my hands up to the stars that shone exuberant and bold in the dark dome of the sky, as if I too was an ancient starkeeper about to catch a star from Bird’s streaming tail.
Veruma was quiet. She had no korob, and the chill must have been getting to her. I wondered where she’d left it. A different named strong would have used their deepnames to warm the air around them, but Veruma’s magical ability was not as strong as expected with her Princely Angle. I didn’t want to embarrass her by asking if she wanted me to warm her up with my own magic.
I asked instead, “You want to go back, get some clothing?”
“I’ll manage,” Veruma muttered, her teeth clanging. “For the record, I doubt you’ll listen.”
“Huh?” I wasn’t sure what that was about, but there was no time to chatter. We had reached the harbor. It was a welcome sight, with its shadowed forest of masts against the plush darkness of the sky. Many of the sporting and fishing boats were lit dimly by lanterns both mechanical and magical. Dorod’s grand trading ships loomed like sleeping dragons in the night. The seventh, Dorod’s newest creation, was new to the harbor. The sea was so dark I could barely see the new ship, swallowed almost into nothing against the gray shadows of the harbor. A few deepname lanterns stole shapes and lines from the night.
The incessant sound of the waves soothed me. Revels had happened here too. Veruma tossed a spent bottle away with her foot and swore under her breath. Come morning, after everybody slept off the revels, the whole archipelago would be outdoors, tidying up after themselves. But, obviously, not yet.
Our sporting boats were anchored close to each other. Mine was newer and sleeker, Veruma’s a sturdier, older shape. The prows of our boats were carved—mine with a serpent-head, Veruma’s with a stylized mountain lion. The two of us had been sailing since we were small. Sometimes we would race each other, at other times we would sail together. We’d aim for the open sea and watch the sea serpents that came here each autumn to feed on the transitory, delicate shoals of fish. It occurred to me that it’d been a few years since we’d last embraced on a ship, and I wondered if Veruma’s suggestion to sail into bed had been meant as an offer. Well, it was too late for that, and I didn’t even regret it. She was the one who decided to leave, and we’d been apart for two years. If she wanted me to call her Soli again, she’d need to ask.
I sighed. We’d get together again at some point. We always did. But perhaps not. Thank Bird ours wasn’t one of those lands where people expected to take a single lover forever, or take only one lover at a time.
“Your boat or mine?” I asked.
“You should steer, since you have a korob.”
Eh. I unbelted the garment and threw it at Veruma. “Here, let’s take yours.”
“Then why are you even asking?” But she wrapped the korob around herself.
I grinned at Veruma, her face oddly soft in the near-darkness of the harbor. “You’ll have to steer at some point anyway, because I’ll be diving.”
I didn’t bother to warm the air around me with magic. I wasn’t even cold.
Veruma’s boat was a large, sturdy vessel she got as a coming-of-age gift from her mothers. It wasn’t a tradeship, but good enough to take out on a scholarly journey. Veruma took her place at the steering wheel, and something about the tenseness in her shoulders told me she was about to engage her magic. Veruma’s single-syllable and a two-syllable—the Princely Angle—was a powerful configuration, but its activation always came at an effort for her. Erígra had the Princely Angle too, but in them the magic sat easily; elegant like spring water in an exquisite ash-fired clay vessel that could contain so much more. For Veruma, each activation of her configuration felt like she was lifting a heavy weight.
I went belowdecks to get diving gear from where we stored it the last time I’d used Veruma’s boat, two months ago. A sealskin suit, a pair of goggles made of glass and tortoiseshell, and a diving jar. I put the suit and goggles on, but eyed the jar warily. I’d need to carry it in my arms. And I would need to use deepnames anyway, to seal the jar and keep the air fresh, just a much weaker application than what I now planned. I had another set of gear on my own boat, the suit I dove in when I bonded with my star. I had not put a diving jar on then, either.
By the time I came back to the deck, Veruma had steered us out of the harbor and out into the open sea. She eyed my jar-less hands. “Drunk and overconfident, that’s my Ranra. Are you seeking to meet your end in the wave?”
