Lazlo’s first days in Weep passed in a rush of activity and wonder. There was the city to discover, of course, and all that was sweet and bitter in it.
It wasn’t the perfect place he had imagined as a boy. Of course it wasn’t. If it ever had been, it had gone through far too much to stay that way. There were no high wires or children in feather cloaks; as near as he could find out, there never had been. The women didn’t wear their hair long enough to trail behind them, and for good reason: The streets were as dirty as the streets of any city. There were no cakes set out on window ledges, either, but Lazlo had never really expected that. There was garbage, and vermin, too. Not a lot, but enough to keep a dreamer from idealizing the object of his long fascination. The withered gardens were a blight, and beggars lay as though dead, collecting coins on the hollows of their closed eyes, and there were altogether too many ruins.
And yet there was such color and sound, such life: wren men with their caged birds, dream men blowing colored dust, children with their shoe harps making music just by running. There was light and there was darkness: The temples to the seraphim were more exquisite than all the churches in Zosma, Syriza, Maialen put together, and witnessing the worship there—the ecstatic dance of Thakra—was the most mystical experience of Lazlo’s life. But there were the butcher priests, too, performing divination of animal entrails, and the Doomsayers on their stilts, crying End Times from behind their skeleton masks.
All this was contained in a cityscape of carved honey stone and gilded domes, the streets radiating out from an ancient amphitheater filled with colorful market stalls.
This afternoon he had eaten lunch there with some of the Tizerkane, including Ruza, who taught him the phrase “You have ruined my tongue for all other tastes.” Ruza assured him that it was the highest possible compliment to the chef, but the merriness in everyone’s eyes suggested a more . . . prurient meaning. In the market, Lazlo bought himself a shirt and jacket in the local style, neither of them gray. The jacket was the green of far forests, and needed cuffs to catch the sleeves between biceps and deltoids. These came in every imaginable material. Eril-Fane wore gold. Lazlo chose the more economical and understated leather.
He bought socks, too. He was beginning to understand the appeal of money. He bought four pair—a profligate quantity of socks—and not only were they not gray, no two pair were even the same color. One was pink, and another had stripes.
And speaking of pink, he sampled blood candy in a tiny shop under a bridge. It was real, and it was awful. After fighting back the urge to gag, he told the confectioner, weakly, “You have ruined my tongue for all other tastes,” and saw her eyes flare wide. Her shock was chased by a blush, confirming his suspicions regarding the decency of the compliment.
“Thank you for that,” Lazlo told Ruza as they walked away. “Her husband will probably challenge me to a duel.”
“Probably,” agreed Ruza. “But everyone should fight at least one duel.”
“One sounds just about right for me.”
“Because you’d die,” Ruza clarified unnecessarily. “And not be alive to fight another.”
“Yes,” said Lazlo. “That is what I meant.”
Ruza clapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. We’ll make a warrior of you yet. You know . . .” He eyed the green brocade purse that had belonged to Calixte’s grandmother. “For starters, you might buy a wallet while we’re here.”
“What, you disapprove of my purse?” asked Lazlo, holding it up to show off its gaudy brooch to best advantage.
“Yes, I rather do.”
“But it’s so handy,” said Lazlo. “Look, I can wear it like this.” He demonstrated, dangling it from his wrist by its drawstrings and swinging it in circles, childlike.
Ruza just shook his head and muttered, “Faranji.”
But mostly, there was work to be done.
Over those first few days, Lazlo had to see to it that all the Godslayer’s delegates were set up with workspace to accommodate their needs, as well as materials and, in some cases, assistants. And since most hadn’t bothered to learn any of their host language on the journey, they all needed interpreters. Some of the Tizerkane understood a little, but they had their duties to attend to. Calixte was nearly fluent by now, but she had no intention of spending her time helping “small-minded old men.” And so Lazlo found himself very busy.
Some of the delegates were easier than others. Belabra, the mathematician, requested an office with high walls he might write his formulas upon and whitewash over as he saw fit. Kether, artist and designer of catapults and siege engines, needed only a drafting table brought into his room at the guildhall.
Lazlo doubted that the engineers needed much more than that, but Ebliz Tod seemed to view it as a matter of distinction—that the more “important” guests should ask for, and receive, the most. And so he dictated elaborate and specific demands that it was then Lazlo’s duty to fulfill, with the help of a number of locals Suheyla organized to assist him. The result was that Tod’s Weep workshop surpassed his Syriza office in grandeur, though he did indeed spend most of his time at the drafting table in the corner.
Calixte asked for nothing at all, though Lazlo knew she was procuring, with Tzara’s assistance, an array of resins with which to concoct sticking pastes to aid in her climbing. Whether she would be called upon by Eril-Fane to do so was much in question—she herself suspected he’d invited her along more to rescue her from jail than from real need of her—but she was determined to win her bet with Tod in any case. “Any luck?” Lazlo asked her when he saw her coming back from a test at the anchor.
“Luck has nothing to do with it,” she replied. “It’s all strength and cleverness.” She winked, flexing her hands like five-legged spiders. “And glue.”
As she dropped her hands, it occurred to Lazlo that they bore no gray discoloration. He had discovered, after his own contact with the anchor, that the faint dirty tinge did not wash off, even with soap and water. It had faded, though, and was gone now. The mesarthium, he thought, must be reactive with skin the way some other metals were, such as copper. Not Calixte’s skin, though. She’d just been touching the anchor and bore no trace of it.
The Fellerings, Mouzaive the magnetist, and Thyon Nero all needed laboratory space in which to unload the equipment they had brought with them from the west. The Fellerings and Mouzaive were content with converted stables next to the guildhall, but Thyon refused them, demanding to scout other sites. Lazlo had to go along as interpreter, and at first he couldn’t tell what it was the alchemist was looking for. He turned down some rooms as too big and others as too small, before settling on the attic story of a crematorium—a cavernous space larger than others he’d rejected as too big. It was also windowless, with a single great, heavy door. When he demanded no fewer than three locks for it, Lazlo understood: He’d chosen the place for privacy.
He was intent on keeping the secret of azoth, it would seem, even in this city whence, long ago, the secret had come.
Drave required a warehouse to store his powder and chemicals, and Lazlo saw to it that he had one—outside the city, in case of fiery misadventure. And if the distance resulted in less day-to-day Drave, well, that was just a bonus.
“It’s a damned inconvenience,” the explosionist groused, though the inconvenience proved quite minimal, due to the fact that after overseeing the unloading of his supplies, he spent no further time there.
“Just tell me what you want blown up and I’m good for it,” he said, and then proceeded to spend his time scouting the city for pleasures and making women uncomfortable with his leering.