The creek is wide and muddy and an ancient tideline reveals that the sea was once higher. Steps have been cut in the side and jetties lashed together. A system of buckets drags water to a slide at the top. From here, irrigation channels carry it to the fields on Hekati’s valley floor.
Turns out the sea is not salt.
Rusting rings on a sea wall tell of barges long gone. A crumbling maze, mostly no higher than a child’s hip, shows where offices once stood. Stonefoam is cheap and easy to use, but it needs upkeep. It has been centuries since anyone tried to preserve the harbour buildings. Probably decades since there was much left to maintain.
The sea stinks.
It is not sewage, because fewer than three thousand people now occupy a habitat built for several million. And ninety miles of water can cope easily with the effluent from that number. Rancid algae cloud the shallows.
The days are hot and the nights cold on the coast. Both are less extreme, however, than in the mountains. A few boats hug the shore.
They are small, with triangular sails that carry them up the coast during the day. At dusk, they moor for the night if they want to continue. Or turn, and ride the opposite wind down the coast again. Either choice will take you back to where you started.
At the creek’s edge stands a huge cube.
Its sides are unpitted and its edges sharp. If gods built gun emplacements, this is what they’d look like, right down to a long slit that looks north. Twice the height of a human, this slit takes a whole minute to walk from one end to the other; and every year a new gang of boys rappel down from the cube’s roof, only to discover the blackness inside the slit is unbreakable glass.
Those who sail the sea say there’s another cube on the opposite side of Hekati. It’s identical, but for the fact its slit faces south. Both cubes have cities on top, and both cities are reached by mud-brick steps, making them easy to defend.
Enyo, the city here, is roofed with sheet metal. As many as thirty houses are still in use, which means ten are ruined and used only by goats. The streets are narrow, with abrupt turnings. Others lead off the cube’s edge with no warning.
Defence against attack. Although how anyone can mount an attack on a city that drops into the sea on three sides and can only be approached by narrow mud-brick steps on the fourth . . .
Well, it’s obvious.
You scale the sides or use the steps. One will exhaust you, and both will lay you open to bullets and arrows and spears, as well as dropped rocks and pebbles flung from catapults. It is a poor city, Enyo . . . But a safe one.
In the middle of Enyo is a square. Here you find the largest houses. All have three storeys, and one house has four. Unlike the others, this house has its shutters closed against the afternoon heat.
The attic of the four-storey house stinks of goats and dung, smoke and shit. That’s not unusual. The whole of Enyo stinks of goats and dung, smoke and shit. What is unusual is the fire burning in one corner. It’s piled high with smouldering herbs that choke the air and make a young woman’s eyes sting. She’s naked to the waist, barefoot and wearing combat pants hacked off at the thigh.
She has small breasts, dark nipples and a leather sheath fixed to the small of her back by a complex webbing harness. Scars criss-cross her abdomen. Removing the webbing would make her cooler, but she’d rather die.
So she leaves the dagger in place, despite its hilt being hot enough to hurt when it touches, which is every time she turns.
It’s late afternoon and she’s exhausted.
Others offer to take her place, and quickly learn to mind their own business. She shits in a bucket, eats only what is put in front of her and shaves between her thighs, under her arms and across her skull each morning. The young woman barely notices she is doing any of these.
‘Paper.’
The word comes in a croak from the bed. That’s where a naked man is tied. As the young woman turns, the man jerks against his ropes and falls silent, his fingers bunching into fists as his eyes glare at someone she can’t see.
‘Paper,’ he repeats.
Spitting into the fire, the girl turns her back and leaves. She shuts the attic door with a slam. I know who she is. Know who that figure on the bed is too.
It’s me . . .
With the coming of that knowledge I cease to be able to stare down on wild birds as they circle above the city. And I lose my ability to stare through roofs into the rooms below. With this loss comes sleep. When I wake, it’s to a greyness that has no edges. This is death, I think.
Someone laughs, and it’s a tired and bitter laugh. ‘So,’ says a voice. ‘You’re back.’
‘Lieutenant Bonafonte?’
‘Haze, sir.’
Should have known. ‘Where am I?’
‘Which bit of you?’
‘The real bit.’
Haze snorts. ‘Your body’s on a bed in Franc’s room. She hasn’t left your side in three weeks.’ He hesitates, and decides to say it anyway. ‘You died.’
Not almost died, or were close to death.
‘What happened?’
‘Good question,’ he says. ‘The kyp brought you back, probably. Also you heal indecently fast.’
That I know, have always known. Wounds close, bones mend, and sinews knit themselves together. You can take me to the edge of death, and seemingly beyond . . . Given me some of the worst moments of my life.
‘If I’m there,’ I say, ‘what am I doing here?’
You can say one thing for Haze, he understands the question immediately. ‘Piggybacking a subset of Hekati,’ he tells me. ‘Damn near killing me keeping your memories in one piece.’ He is not boasting. His words are too flat for that.
‘Where’s my gun?’
‘Safe,’ says Haze. ‘I’m looking after it.’ The calmness of his answer makes me suspicious. He realizes that, because he adds: ‘That’s all. Nothing more . . . sir. Are you ready to return?’
‘Am I . . . ?’
‘It’s going to hurt,’ he says. ‘Even with whatever makes you mend.’ He pauses. ‘Franc still believes you’re going to die. She’s . . .’
‘I’ve seen how she is.’
‘Yes, sir.’