“Really?” Jane says. “Artists!”
I’ve watched Zorsteddan people touch the hanging on this side too, and find it to be just like any other hanging, he says. But never anyone I know to be an artist or a seeker.
“Are you an artist or a seeker, Steen?”
I’m a strayhound, he says simply.
“Can all strayhounds get through?”
I don’t know. I’ve never told anyone about it. Tu Reviens is my house, he says, with a possessiveness that Jane finds endearingly doglike, but also pretty human.
“Hasn’t anyone in Tu Reviens ever seen the painting changing?” she asks. “Like when we could see Ivy in the hanging from the Zorsted side? Doesn’t anyone Zorsteddan come looking for their red-and-green umbrella?”
It’s a painting of an unused corner in a dimly lit room, Steen says, in the part of the duchess’s mansion used by her spy network, as you know. The umbrella was placed in that corner ages ago to serve as a sign to Zorsteddan spies that they’ve come to the right place. It’s never been moved in over a hundred years.
“Hm,” says Jane. “And I guess if the umbrella painting briefly changed, then went back to normal, you’d assume you were just seeing things. You’d doubt your own eyes.”
Yes. And as for any changes in the hanging on the Zorsted side, Steen adds, then pauses. Again, it’s a dimly lit room. But also, a hanging with a scene that changes wouldn’t be considered so remarkable in Zorsted.
“I see,” Jane says. Their descent has finally brought them to a long, enclosed corridor with a series of doors. Steen leads her to a wooden door that’s larger and more sturdy-looking than the others.
“Who made the Zorsteddan hanging?” Jane asks.
An artist named Morstlow, says Steen. And it sounds like he did so around the time your Horst Mallow was painting, if Mrs. Vanders is correct.
A lamp on the wall by the door gutters. Yellow light dances across Steen’s fur.
“Did this Morstlow also have a reputation for being eccentric? Like Horst Mallow? The names are awfully similar.”
The Zorsteddan attitude toward . . . people who see things differently is not the same as the Other Land attitude, he says. I don’t think Morstlow had any particular reputation.
“Is he the one person you told me about?” Jane says. “The one person in Zorsted who knows about the passage into Tu Reviens?”
No, says Steen. Morstlow’s been dead a long time. I have no idea what he knew.
“Who is the person, then? Is it the duchess?”
It’s not the duchess.
“Then who?”
Steen’s neck is craned back so that he can look into Jane’s face. She can feel him begin words, touch her mind with the edges of words, then pull them back. It tickles oddly, like a feather in her brain. She recognizes this as the feeling of his indecision.
He breaks eye contact, turning to the door. This door leads to the outside, he tells her. Don’t be scared; you look just like everyone else. Are you ready?
*
There’s a distinct feeling to being up and about at dawn. This is one of the first things Jane notices: Zorsted feels surprisingly as other places feel at dawn. People communicate not in words but in glances. A number of people on the streets, opening the doors of shops, leading recalcitrant horses, or simply standing in windows, look pleasantly into Jane’s face and say nothing.
Jane tries not to stare. She stays close to Steen, who trots along with his head held high.
The buildings, tall, with steep roofs, are wooden and shingled, the streets made of paving stones. No matter where Steen leads her, she can always see a few stone towers, rose-colored against a gray-pink sky; and always, between buildings, the sea.
Slowly, that magnificent pink wash fades and Jane sees the true colors of the towers: whites and grays and browns. They glow slightly.
“Do the wooden houses respond to the sun and glow too?”
To some extent, says Steen, but not like stone. Stone is older. It contains more power.
“Do all stone things create light? Would you want that to happen with a stone chair, or a bowl, or a tomb?”
The dead of Zorsted are buried at sea, not in tombs, says Steen. But regardless, the stone has an intelligence. It generally won’t light an unpopulated room, and it knows what it’s being used for. It knows if it’s been made into a thing that shouldn’t glow.
“What do you mean? How can it know?”
There’s a consciousness to the world here.
“To the stone?”
To everything, Janie, Steen says simply. The earth, the ground, the clouds.
“The clouds?”
Not an extreme consciousness. Consciousness might be too strong a word, really. But things have awareness.
Jane thinks this through. “But—if the stone has awareness, is it wise to cut into it? Like, to make bricks?”
The wise builder is careful, Steen says, and respectful.
“Or?”
Or the stone is unhappy, says Steen. And then the building is unhappy, and everyone can feel it.
“And then what happens?”
Nothing happens, says Steen. That’s all.
“The building doesn’t do anything? Like, drop rocks on people or something?”
No! says Steen. It’s nothing like that. It’s more like, you might find yourself depressed whenever you enter the building. And it might be bad for business. The owners might eventually decide to renovate, in a way that the stone might like better.
“How would they know what it would like better?”
Some people have sensitivities to stuff like that, says Steen. But this doesn’t happen often, really, Janie. It’s not as strange as it sounds.
“I think maybe you don’t realize how strange it sounds,” Jane says.
More people are on the streets now, and some of them are dressed colorfully, in purples, reds, golds. Jane sees people with dark skin, light skin. She studies the back of her hand. She’s already noticed that her skin here is pretty much the same color it is at home.
Steen notices her examination. Zorsted is an international hub, he tells her. Zorsteddan citizens have roots from all over, including across the sea.
“Across the sea,” Jane says, startled. “How big is Zorsted?”
Zorsted is a small island. It’s only one of the nations of this earth, Steen says, which is an entire planet, just like yours.
She’s too overwhelmed. Tu Reviens is a gateway to an entire other planet? Of conscious rocks, trees, and clouds? “What’s wrong with this place that you haven’t discovered electricity?” she says, distress making her want to be antagonistic. “Is it the dark ages here? Do I have to pee in the gutter?”
Steen makes a small, hurt noise, and Jane is ashamed of herself. “I’m sorry, Steen,” she says. “It’s just a lot to take in.”
He draws himself up tall (for a strayhound). We have plumbing, and toilets, and infrastructure, he says with dignity, and a brilliant and just duchess. We’ve made advances in science and medicine that would astound the quacks in the Other Land. We have technology that doesn’t destroy our environment. If you pee in the gutter, you’ll probably be arrested for public drunkenness and indecency.
“I’m sure I would,” Jane says penitently.
He walks beside her with a stiffness that feels like a cold shoulder in her brain. No, in her heart. She knows how much she’s hurt his feelings.
“Steen,” she says gently. “If I were arrested, would you speak up on my behalf? Do strayhounds ever testify in court?”
Why shouldn’t they? he responds huffily. Every court employs an unbiased human reporter who has a strayhound, to assist with translation of witness strayhounds. It’s entirely civilized.
“Can strayhounds be arrested for crimes too?”
Of course, he says. We have free will. What do you think, we’re pets?
“Do you have jobs?”
Most of us choose to work alongside our person, but we can do what we like.
She watches the prim, careful steps he’s taking. A few other people in the streets have had strayhounds trotting beside them, but the vast majority don’t. And it occurs to her that Zorsteddan strayhounds may, in fact, pee in the gutter. She sighs. It’s complicated to be bound to a telepathic dog.