I’d spent all of Davod’s money.  I had to tell him.

The sun began to trace its arc westward, where the city of Ulum dropped down with the valley into a hazy oblivion of blue sky.  The warm sunshine muted by the vines trained along the framework of the room, the cold air coming off the mountains, cotton bedsheets threaded so fine as to rival silk and plush pillows covered in woven yarn, the heated floor under the bed, all of it made the room about as comfortable as I could imagine.

I couldn’t blame Oasis for drifting off; she’d been exhausted.  I hadn’t thought she’d slept in days, and this was the first moment where the only thing to do for Dune was wait.  I made sure to tuck her in with a few pillows between them so as to keep them from bumping into one another as they stirred.  Other than that I took a few bites of the leftovers, starting with that meaty-gravy thing that burned my tongue and sent fumes through my sinuses reminiscent of the first time I tried hellroot.  As my eyes watered, I swallowed what was left of the fruit cup, and the strong liquor it was soaked in did nothing to put out the fire.  It was delicious, but damn was it punishing.  I finished that up, took a good swig of water, then gently slid the door closed on my way out.

In the hallway, the air was thick and warm, and the song of the water organ downstairs echoed through the staircase.

Down in the lobby, a middle-aged Goloagi woman dressed in a gown with layers of sheer white tulle set with woven red and pink flowers sat playing.  Her eyes were closed, and her curly hair moved with her shoulders as she massaged the keys, inciting melodious tunes of dizzying complexity.  I sat in one of the plush chairs and listened, trying to work out in my mind how to explain to Davod that I’d taken the thirty-five kren he’d given me for supplies and put it elsewhere, imagining how he might react.

The first time I saw a water organ was in Osenia City; the Count’s daughter had invited me up to the manse.  I sat with her, and she showed me a few things.  She showed me how to check the water levels, the line to fill the glass pipes up to.  There’s a mute pedal that taps the pipe with a cloth to quiet it, and a pedal that lowers the wooden block, allowing you to strike the pipe with the steel hammer directly.  It changes the sound completely.  She lifted up my fingers and placed them for me as I stumbled over the keys trying to find the right ones, and after a time I was able to butcher my way through the most basic of songs.

This woman in the lobby of the hotel was a practiced virtuoso.  Her fingers danced across the keys as her whole body flowed into the melody.  She changed the tone of the music entirely with her mastery of technique and blended herself into the thing as though the instrument was an extension of herself.

If it was one in the afternoon, how many beers would Davod be into, and how many would it take to have him in a forgiving mood?

I sat and listened to her as she played until she was done.  She turned to face me and smiled before floating up the spiral staircase.

I needed to go meet with Davod.  I couldn’t wait any longer.

Out on the street, I stood and stared.  Over people’s heads I could see the pub that graced Falcon Plaza where he’d said he would be.  So, with my heart racing and a deep breath, I mustered up the courage, crossed the street, and entered a totally different shop.

Beside the door was a light-colored wooden table with some curiosities on it.  One of them had a large cylinder with a hand crank, and that was connected to another cylinder through a series of belts and gears.  Inside that was a fan, and when I turned the crank, the fan started turning.  Then, as I turned the crank further, I heard a click, and suddenly the fan started turning faster and faster with each crank.  It clicked again, the tension in the crank grew, and the fan turned ever faster even though I turned it slower.  I knelt down to try and get a closer look, see if I could make out how it was doing that when a voice came from behind me.

“Can I help you?”  The voice came from an older man with long, straight hair that hosted streaks of gray and cascaded down his shoulders.  He studied me through emerald-green eyes.

Through his intimidating disposition I managed to force some words out.  “What is this place?”

“We’re engineers.  We engineer things.  Don’t touch any more of the demos.”

With that, he disappeared behind a gray curtain that filled a doorway to the rear of the shop.  I looked around.  Mounted on the wall was an insect made of wood and paper, easily three feet from wingtip to wingtip, that had an open casing on its back with a box of strange gears and levers along with a coil connected to a small knob that I badly wanted to turn if only I was allowed to touch it.  Another exhibit was a long metal railing the width of a marble, several of which were held in a pool.  The rail ran the length of the wall and followed a series of jumps, bridges, and other obstacles.  I wanted to touch that one, too.

The one that truly grabbed my attention stood alone in the corner, easily five feet tall.  At the bottom was a tub filled with tiny glass beads and a scooper, and at the top was a chute.  My eyes traced the chute downwards past a wheel with paddles that was connected to another box of gears and levers that didn’t appear to do anything at all, but rather ended in two small copper spikes about a quarter of an inch apart.

I needed to know what it did, and I couldn’t tell by looking.  So, I scooped up a cupful of the beads and fed them into the chute.  They fell through a hole in the bottom and dropped down a slide, clattering against the wheel paddles like rain, turning it.  Then, as it gathered speed, I heard a sound like a loud popping that rattled off, several times a second.  I looked, and between the copper spikes, tiny shards of lightning split the air.  I was spellbound.  I had to feed another cup full of beads into the chute, desperate to see it again.

“DIDN’T I TELL YOU NOT TO TOUCH ANYTHING?” the man returned.

“This is amazing!” I said.  “How…”

“GET OUT!”

“Sorry.  I…”

“GET!  OUT!”

With that, he shoved me out of his shop and slammed the door.

I was back out on the street, looking over at the pub.  I took a few steps.  Beside me on the left was a large, flat, wooden board that was home to several pieces of paper arranged in a haphazard mess with older, faded ones hidden beneath freshly written messages.  There was a loft on the fourth floor of a building with a view of Serpent Plaza for the price of one-hundred-seventy-eight kren per month.

I’d never seen that much money in person before.

There was a competition the following day where organists from throughout the empire had come to see who was the best.  The paper didn’t say anything about the prize, but tickets to see the event were twenty-two kren.  Another paper had someone selling fine wooden sculptures.  A crisp, white paper with a silver seal on the top right corner and formally-crafted calligraphy listed out several prostitutes who had lover’s-pox and warned me not to lay with them.  Another one was from someone selling a plow; they wanted twenty kren for it but were willing to take the best offer.  Someone else was giving puppies away.  A small piece of paper tucked away at the side and written in fine handwriting asked me how many more men needed to die in Carthia before the Count’s greedy, egotistical ambitions were sated.

Yes, it asked me that.

Another paper was written by someone with a very poor understanding of the grammar and spelling conventions of Herali offering Goloagi language lessons at six kren for an hour.  Another paper informed me that the Kuyue ceremony, formally adopting young Jorel into the Duvan family was going to be… three days ago.

Outside the pub, I heard Davod’s hearty laughter come from within, and my heart stabbed against my chest.  How was I going to explain it to him?  I felt like I couldn’t breathe.  How could I have been so stupid?

Next door was a shop, so I went in there.

The first thing I noticed was a silver tray set atop a clean, light-colored wood table that was home to a pyramid stack of small white cakes, and my eyes coveted them dearly.  Outside that the walls were painted an off-white shade of yellow but mostly covered in woven rugs, each depicting a scene of some kind.  There were family portraits, a man embracing a woman holding a baby while the three of them gazed out at me.  There were landscapes, some islands, a scene of a woman sitting on the beach in Tobor drinking from a coconut and watching the waves roll by, and another with the same mountains that surrounded Ulum and a flock of birds in a V-formation flying above them.  Others were filled with giant calligraphy in one language or another.  There was one in Herali that said knowledge is freedom, and freedom is the requisite of peace.  Another, in Goloagi, said Man’s power is wealth, God’s power is love.  Many were the totem spirits—Turtle, Serpent, Rabbit, Falcon, Lion, all of them, plus some others I didn’t know.  I’d had no idea simple rug-weaving could make such intricate designs.

“Do you see anything you like?”

I turned.  There before me was a girl with skin like pure alabaster and long, wavy yellow hair.  She had an otherworldly beauty to her; her complexion was pristine and the curves of her cheeks were clearly defined yet elegantly soft.  She looked me up and down through dark-green eyes that exuded curiosity.

I smiled.  It was worth a shot.  “To you… hello… nice… uh… the meeting.”

She smiled wide through plush, ruby lips and flawless teeth, and spoke with a pinch of island accent.  “I won’t speak Tobori with you, sorry, but it’s nice of you to try.  Would you like some cake?”

That grabbed my attention.  “I wish.  Alas, I’m not here to buy anything; I’m afraid to face my friend because I spent all his money.”

At that, she laughed.  Her laughter was like music unto itself.  “So you’re hiding in here!  Worse, you spent all the money you could have used to buy one of these fine pieces!”  Her delicate fingers stroked the soft tufts of a portrait of some nobleman in elegant regalia standing with one foot on a stool and an ornate sword scabbard hanging from his side.

I lowered my eyes.  “Something like that.”

Her eyes passed up and down my body, and she smiled wide.  “In that case, come.  I have something to show you.”

“You do?”

“But first, have some cake.  You know you want to.”

I took a deep breath.  “I can’t.  I really can’t buy anything, I’m sorry.  I wish I could…”

“Don’t worry about it,” she swooned.  “We usually throw it away at the end of the day.”

At that, I took one and swallowed it whole.  Goodness, it was still warm!  The dry outer cake-shell had kept the inner goo from leaking out, the sweet, syrupy ooze of cream mixed with Tobori Janju liquor.  It burst into my mouth with the most satisfying dance of sweet and sharp just as I’d remembered, and I couldn’t stop myself from having another.

“Come on,” she smiled.  Then she giggled and shook her head when I snuck a third.

There was a blue velvet curtain at the back of the shop beyond which some rolls were packed away on high shelves along with some boxes filled with things, and in one corner stood a broom, dusting mop, and some jars.  Following her was… I wasn’t blind.  The way that blue silk dress fell over her behind, gently hugging her thin waist and making her hips pop grabbed me with greater tension than any amount of cake ever could.

“I always love to unpack new material, to be the first one to see it, I just love it.  It’s hard to explain.”  She peeked over her shoulder just as my eyes were soaking in the most perfectly balanced arse I’d ever seen, round and supple, plush yet ideally proportioned to her delicate frame.  “Would you like to see it?”

“Uh… the tapestries?”

She giggled again and spoke through a wicked smile.  “Of course the tapestries!”  Her exotic accent hooked my ears and drew me into her beyond my wildest fantasies.  “My father travels to Saen every few months to seek out new product.  This roll here, he brought it just last night.  Will you help me?”

I’d have done anything and everything she asked of me.  Her hand rested on a large roll of black paper tied up with brown twine set on a shelf about as high as her piercing eyes.  At the front was a small paper tag with some writing on it.  I looked.  I recognized the Saeni script, but I didn’t know any of the words.

She looked at it closely and turned to me with her lips cracked open in an expectant gaze.

“What’s it say?”

“Sai-iwa nau’ye annu-ui.  It’s a lover that you let go of long ago and you can’t stop thinking about them.  Would you like to see it?”

“Yeah.  Yeah, let’s do it.”

“Grab this end.”

I did, and it was quite heavy.  I pulled and pulled until the whole roll, about six feet in length, was nearly down.  She then stood behind it and grabbed the other end, lifting it off the shelf and bringing it down to her level.  We then carried it over to a nearby table and set it down.  I could feel the strain in my shoulders already, but she didn’t seem at all affected by the weight of the thing.  There, she pushed so that it rolled over to where the paper met with a seam of wax down the length of it.  She then grabbed a small knife and started working it under the seal, pulling all the way down until the paper could be peeled away with ease.

Beneath that, a massive roll of rug was compacted together, easily two feet in diameter.  She turned it slightly and found the edge of the outermost one, then peeled it away and stretched it out onto the table, smoothing out tufts of fabric and fluffing them up as she went until the image sewn into it was clear.

There was an infant lying in a wicker basket that was half covered in a white sheet and set out on the stone step before a wooden door.  The level of detail showed the texture of the stone walls of the building, the grooves and tiny pocket holes in the cobbled doorstep, and a stone archway beyond which people walked by in the street.  A ray of yellow sunlight passed through the arch and landed on the baby.  In my fingers, the picture was soft as rabbit fur.

“This is extraordinary,” I said.  “It’s so detailed.”  The baby’s hand reached out of the basket, grasping in the open air.  The little wrinkles, tiny fingernails, all of it was meticulously embroidered into the image.

The girl giggled.  “Would you like to see what comes next?”

“Yeah.”

She had to push hard to roll the thing over to find the edge of the next rug, then pull it down and hold it flat while she rolled the rest of them out of the way.  Woven into the fabric was a cozy village with a waterfall beneath a bridge at the center of town just like in Gath.  In the pool beneath the waterfall beside an old mill, children played at splashing one another while distant mountains framed the sky.

“That looks so peaceful,” she said.

“I love this.  What’s next?”

She peeled away the next one and unfurled it before us.  There was a girl with skin darker than I’d ever seen, like a green so deep as to flirt with shades of black.  She wore nothing but a necklace of wooden beads that left her breasts exposed and a small strap around her waist that hosted an incidental loincloth.  She rode atop some strange kind of creature with a long neck, and a blue stripe that ran from below its eye down across its body, standing on its hind legs and showing talons on its stretched out forelimbs.  She held a long spear that reached to the top of the tapestry as she looked out over an endless sea of forest that covered hills and valleys like a blanket, all under a cloudy sky.

“What is that?”

She pursed her lips and shook her head.  “I’ve no idea.”

That made me laugh.  “I’ve never seen anyone that color, and what kind of creature is that?”

She giggled.  “The people who make these, uh… let’s just say they have a cactus in Saen that will… show you things.”

The next image woven into the fabric, like the others, was flattened out from being packed so tightly though a simple stroke of my hand across its soft fur was enough to restore the tufts.  It showed two men wrestling on a stone circle while others watched.  One of the men was my color, with long hair flailing about, while the other had the same unusually dark green skin as the girl on the previous one.  Among the spectators, that girl again.  She stood with that creature by her side, standing on its hind legs and watching the fight with everyone else.  In the background, lush trees filled the expanse.

“You say these came from Saen?”

“Yeah.  You ever been there?”

“Once, but this doesn’t look anything like the place I visited.”

“Saen is huge,” she reminded me.  “Four-hundred-thousand square miles.”

“Of mostly desert, and that's not a desert.  Where is this from?”

She shrugged and peeled away the next one.  At the center of the sky, the gargantuan gray balloon of an imperial zeppelin loomed.  On the ground, more of those dark-green people looked up from the rocks and trees, some of them pointing while mothers shielded their children.  Opposite them, men stood in formation, also looking up at it with their spears drawn and shields raised.  Between them, tents burned and there were bodies on the ground, more of those dark green people, lying amid tufts of crimson fabric.

“What language is that?” I pointed at the top left corner, where a string of glyphs ran down the whole side in a straight column.

Her eyes opened wide and she shook her head.  “I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

As she pushed the roll back to the beginning so as to grasp at the next one, I stuffed the last of the cakes into my mouth and squeezed it with my tongue until it burst.  She glanced at me and giggled slightly.  “Someone likes janju cakes!”

“Listen,” I laughed, though my mouth was full.  “You grew up with this stuff.”

She smiled at me and then turned her gaze at the next tapestry as it unfurled before us.

It was a girl.  She had that same exceedingly dark-green skin.  She wore a belt inlaid with gold studs, from across which was a white silk that fell down to cover her privates, but her breasts were out and, as with everything else, details of her nipples were woven into the image with sublime precision.  She wore a gold band on one wrist, silver on the other.  She wore a band on her leg and a few on each arm in a dizzying array of colors.  She wore a golden band about her head set with jewels that seemed to sparkle.  She wore a necklace, another necklace, and then a third necklace that somehow tied the other two together through a net of delicate gold chains, and earrings that seemed to wrap all over her ears with gold chains dangling with brightly-colored jewels at the end of each.  Behind her, long tufts of straight ivory-white hair seemed to flow everywhere, well down past her knees and off the edge of the picture.  She stared at me through hypnotic eyes as yellow as the sun, her fingernails were black and sharpened into claws, and in one hand she held fire.

I had no words.  She mesmerized me.  I wanted to study the image, keep it in my mind forever, and never let it go.  In every corner of the fabric, the image of this strange dark-green girl captivated my attention.

“Do you want to see the next one?” she said.

I had to shake myself to come back to reality.  I couldn’t even answer until a minute later when she started to giggle.  “Yeah.”

I’d never regretted being broke so much in my life.

She peeled at the next one and ran her hands along the soft fabric.  A band of men, worn and haggard, crouched in the shadows of the forest with bows drawn and arrows nocked.  They hid behind some bushes looking out onto the dirt road where, bathed in sunlight, a column of armored men marched in formation.  In the distance, snow-capped mountains filled the sky.  After a while of studying this image, I saw in the corner beside the men was a woman, barely visible as she blended in with the trees, clutching an infant close to her body.

“Wow,” was all I managed to say.

She giggled and revealed the next one.  Most of the color was beige that tapered off into a darker tan around the corners.  In the center of the frame, rows and rows of beds lined up into the distance with people lying down.  Some of them let their arms, gray with boils on their skin, fall off the bed and drop to the floor while others had sheets covering their faces.  Some were turned to the side, curled up into fetal position while others gaped their mouths open and their eyes closed.  Boys walked down the rows with basins in hand; one knelt beside a bed wiping the person with a rag.  Off to the side, a man pushed a wheelbarrow with a leg draped over the side and flies hovering above, and in the top right corner, a collection of three large, squarish glyphs dominated the space.

“I know this one,” she tapped at the symbols.  “I’ve seen this same set of symbols on graffiti in the city.  It’s an ancient Umeazi script that fell out of use generations before the Empire enfolded their lands.  It says, ‘we will never forget.’”

“Was this the plague?” I said.

“That makes sense,” she nodded.

“But that was twenty years ago.”

She looked up at me and smirked.  “It may surprise you to learn that there are people in this world who are older than you!”

“Of course.”

In the next image, a man was in a metal cage in the middle of the desert.  There was sand all around, and the edges trailed off into a cacophony of reds, blues, purples, and yellows.  Beside the cage, a figure dressed in white cloth lay just outside, reaching in to hold his hand while the relentless sun beat him.  A lone falcon perched atop the cage staring out into the sand while off to the side, a grove of date palms shaded a cool spring.  As I looked closer, illusions seemed to blend into the sand; I saw the shape of a hand that looked as though it moved, sifting through the desert sand while the falcon followed it with its eyes.

I stood and stared speechless, trying to make sense of what I was looking at while the girl standing next to me gazed at me with an expectant smile.  Then without a word, she rolled the whole thing back over to grab the next one, peeled it away from the dwindling mass, and unfurled it.

There was a large outcropping of rock from which arrows rained down.  A man, a woman, and a boy were running through sparse trees.  The man held a small child in his hands while the woman was holding a baby.  On the ground all about them, bodies of men lay scattered and broken while tufts of crimson fabric watered the soil.  The terror on the boy’s face was my terror.

“I wish I knew where these were from.”

She answered me.  “There’s a region in Saen where this is an art.  It takes a lifetime to master the technique.”

“No, these images.  What is this?  What am I looking at?”

She smiled and glanced back at the scene.  “I suppose they weave what they see.  What else could they do?”

“But where was this?  Who are these people?  Is this the war in Kulun?”

She shrugged, not once tearing her eyes from my face, and spoke not a word.

“This happened.  This was a battle; who were these people?”

She unfurled the next one.  It was a great field of green grass.  Two masses of men in armor, each clustered together with spears pointed out at the other group and shields raised, and they moved towards one another.  Amid each crowd, banners flew atop poles while rolling hills took up the backdrop, and above each army not one, but three Imperial zeppelins advanced on one another.  Off in the distance, on each side was a small hill.  On the right stood a beast like a giant man with two heads—one of a bull with horns, and the other a lamb. In one hand it held a sythe that reached above its head, and in the other a leash, the end of which was a lion standing with one paw reached out and his mouth gaping in a roar. On the left hill stood a figure whose head was the sun. 

I said nothing.  She said nothing and separated the last two, gently pulling them apart and unfurling one, flattening it out.  It was the Emperor, but it wasn’t him.  The man sitting on the Imperial throne wearing the Imperial robe with the Imperial crown on his head wasn’t Goloagi at all, but a Herali, with straight, dark-green hair cascading over his shoulders.

I laughed at first.  “You’d better not let anybody see that!”

“Why?” she chuckled.  “Are you going to tattle?”

“No!  Of course not!”

“Good!” she smiled then turned to the very last one.  It was a map of the whole Empire.  There were no words, but I knew my duchies.  All fifteen were there, Heralia, Golago, the Islands of Tobor, Umaz, the expansive desert of Saen that dwarfed them all, Jinata, Bozan, Kulun that reached out to touch the Agarthan Sea all the way east, Wozuen except it had a piece carved out of it forming a sixteenth, Zanala, the tiny Duchy of Krovass, Mayeno, Galaneao, Showan, and Piandrass.  They were all there, but there was another that didn’t belong.  South of Heralia, beyond the Terbulin ridge, was a seventeenth duchy.

“What is that?  Why is that there?” I pointed at the extra province that wasn’t supposed to exist.  “Is that Carthia?”

“No,” she said.  “Carthia is right here,” she pointed at the very northern edge of this additional duchy, not even an inch south of the border with Heralia.

I turned to her directly.  “Do you know anything about Carthia?  I was called to arms; that’s why I’m here.  But I don’t know anything about the place.”

Her face sank.  “Oh.”

“What do you mean, oh?”

She looked up.  Her eyes suddenly grew distant, and a sadness filled the air around her.  She stood, then made her way back through the velvet curtain to the front of the store without looking back.

I followed her.  “What’s wrong?”

She slowly turned her gaze back to me.  There was an invisible wall between us.  “I’ve never been there.  Good luck to you.”

I lifted my hands to take her shoulders, and she stepped back from me with a weary smile.

“I never got your name,” I said.

“That’s true.”

As I tried to wrap my head around her sudden change in demeanor, she put her hand on my back and ushered me towards the door.

“I don’t understand.  Did I say something wrong?”

At that her eyes met mine one last time as I stepped out onto the street.  “Goodbye, heartbreaker.  Go fess up to your friend.”

And she closed the door on me.