Well, technically yesterday had been the first time, but he hadn’t noticed, since he had been out in the chaos of the city along with everyone else. But this morning it was quiet, and he woke hungry. He’d slept in the Merchants’ Guildhall, in the opulent rooms provided for him, which he had been shunning in favor of a workshop above a defunct crematorium. He had wanted his privacy but now it was too private. He didn’t care for the idea of no one knowing where he was. What if he woke up in the morning to find that those few who remained in the city had gone, without even thinking to tell him?
So he had slept at the guildhall, where Calixte was, too, and where they had piled the books in the passages. The Tizerkane garrison was close by. He could see the watchtower out his window and know whether it was manned. And the kitchen, he thought, would most likely be stocked, even if there was no one in it to cook and wash up after.
He dressed, stiff and sore, all aching shoulders and raw hands, and wandered toward the dining room, assuming the kitchen was probably somewhere in its vicinity. It was. It was big and full of copper pots, and the pantry shelves were lined with bins labeled with words he couldn’t read in an alphabet he hadn’t learned. He lifted lids, sniffed things, and had, though he did not know it, an experience similar to the godspawn in the citadel, who had also been discovering that food requires esoteric knowledge. He did not equate it with alchemy, though, since alchemy was less mysterious to him than flour, leavening, and the like. The kitchen was obscure to him in the way that women were obscure, and that wasn’t because women worked in the kitchen. Those weren’t the women he meant. Those were servants, and as such, had hardly occupied his thoughts as people, let alone females. Kitchens and women were both subjects that simply did not intrigue him.
Oh, individual women could be interesting, though this was something of a new notion. Calixte and Tzara, he had to admit, were not boring, and neither was Soulzeren, the mechanist who’d built firearms for warlords in the Thanagost badlands. But they did things, like men. The women he knew in Zosma did not. They wouldn’t be permitted to even if they wished, he admitted to himself, though he’d hardly ever considered whether they might. Now that he had met Calixte, Tzara, and Soulzeren, not to mention the intimidating Azareen, he did begin to wonder if any of the hothouse flowers who were paraded before him in Zosma might be as bored with their lot as he was with them.
There was an expectation that he be enchanted with them for their form alone, and for the cultivated coquetry that was like a play they were acting in, all the time. Every civilized person knew the lines and gestures, and made a life out of parroting them about. Those who were counted charming and clever were the ones who were best at making them seem fresh as they patched evenings together out of the same dances and conversations that they’d done and had a thousand times before.
Thyon had played his part. He knew the lines and dances, but inside he had been screaming. He wondered if perhaps he wasn’t the only one. If, behind their lacquered faces, some of those Zosma girls might have felt stifled, too, and secretly longed to steal emeralds and build airships and fight gods in a shadowed city.
Well, when he went home, he would doubtless be made to marry one of them, and then, he supposed, he could ask her.
He let out a laugh. It dropped like a stone. He pushed away the thought that was more distant and more unimaginable than librarians turning out to be gods. Discovering where the fruit was stored, he piled some on a plate and kept scrounging. There had to be cheese. There was. He piled that on, too. Then—glory—he found slabs of bacon in a cold box, and stood there wondering if he could figure out how to fry some.
He answered himself as though affronted. “I am the greatest alchemist of the age. I distilled azoth. I can transmute lead into gold. I think I can light a stove.”
“What’s that, Nero?”
Calixte and Tzara had come in. He gave a start, and flushed, wondering if they’d heard him talking to himself like a fool starved for flattery. “Are you arguing with that bacon?” Calixte asked. “I hope you’re winning, because I’m starving.”
With a wicked grin, Tzara added, “Cannibalism doesn’t really fill you up, you see.”
…
Ruza ate in the garrison mess, and he was halfway through his bowl of thick kesh porridge before he realized what it was that was putting him off about it. Berries tinted the porridge blue, and brought to mind “blue stew.”
When had it been, the day before yesterday? It felt like a year ago at least. It was the last time he saw Lazlo before the explosion. They’d argued. He and some of the others—Shimzen, Tzara—had been joking about taking the explosionist up to the citadel to blow the godspawn into “blue stew.” It had seemed funny then. What exactly had he said? He struggled to remember. That the godspawn were monsters, more like threaves than people? That if Lazlo knew them he’d be happy to blow them up himself?
Ruza’s porridge churned in his stomach. He let his spoon drop into the dregs.
Lazlo was his friend. Lazlo was godspawn.
These two statements could not both be true, because one could not be friends with godspawn. Lazlo was godspawn. There was no denying it. Therefore, he was not Ruza’s friend.
It was supposed to be that simple, but Ruza was finding his mind unable to perform the simplification—as though there were two columns, a Lazlo in each, and he was tasked to erase one of them.
In his lessons—and as Ruza was only eighteen, these were not a distant memory—he had always pressed down too hard with his pencil, committing himself to his first guess, never learning to write lightly in case he was in error. Was it carelessness or confidence? Opinions differed, but did it matter? He could never fully erase his dark pencil lines, and he had never turned his back on a friend.
Hell. He finished his porridge. It was only porridge, and Ruza had yet to meet a philosophical dilemma that could spoil his appetite. He washed up his bowl and stacked it, then headed toward the stables for the donkey and cart. It was book-salvage duty again today with the ridiculous alchemist and his ridiculous face.
Ruza ducked into the barracks for a quick glance in his shaving mirror, though he couldn’t—or wouldn’t—have said why. He knew what he looked like. Was he hoping to discover an improvement? The mirror was small, the light dim, and the four square inches of face looked as they had last time he’d checked. He tossed the mirror onto his bunk—apparently with excessive force, because it skidded into the wall and cracked. Perfect.
He did one more thing before heading on to the stable. He hit up the first aid box for a packet of bandages. He hadn’t known a grown man could have hands soft enough to blister and rip after a few hours hauling rope. The alchemist hadn’t complained, though, and he hadn’t quit. That was something, anyway. No reason he should keep getting blood all over the rope.
…
Both Eril-Fane and Azareen had remained at the garrison overnight. They would hardly go home at a time like this, with the soldiers all on edge, waiting for something to happen. So far, nothing had. The citadel hadn’t moved, or made any further transformation. They could only guess at what was going on up there.
Azareen slept for a time before dawn, and went to the Temple of Thakra at first light to make hasty ablutions. Returning, she sought out Eril-Fane. He wasn’t in the mess or barracks, the practice yard or the command center. She asked the watch captain, and when she heard where he was, her already ramrod soldier’s spine stiffened. She didn’t say a word, but turned on her boot heel and went straight there, the walk giving her anger and hurt time to fuse into something cold.
“Eril-Fane,” she said, coming into the pavilion.
He was in one of the silk sleighs. He appeared to be studying its workings, and looked up when she spoke. “Azareen,” he returned in a far too measured voice. He had been expecting, and dreading, her arrival. Well, perhaps dread was too strong a word, but he knew full well what she would have to say about this idea.
“Going somewhere?” she asked, icy.
“Of course not. Do you think I wouldn’t tell you?”
“But you’re considering it.”
“I’m considering all options.”