Tizerkane. Alive. The implications were profound. If they were alive, then the city was, too. Not a hint or rumor in two hundred years, and now Tizerkane warriors were riding through the gates of the Great Library. In the sheer, shimmering improbability of the moment, it seemed to Lazlo that his dream had tired of waiting and had simply… come to find him.
There were a score of the warriors. The tusks on their helms were the fangs of ravids, and the cages at their belts held scorpions, and they were not all men. A closer look revealed that their bronze chest plates were sculpted in realistic relief, and while half had square pectorals and small nipples, the other half were full-breasted, the metal etched around the navel with the elilith tattoo given to all women of the Unseen City when they reached their fertility. But this went unnoticed in the first thrilling moment of their arrival.
All attention was arrested by the man who rode vanguard.
Unlike the others, he was unhelmed and unarmored—more human for being unhidden, but no less striking for it. He was neither young nor old, his wild black hair just beginning to gray at his brow. His face was square and brown and leathered by much sun, his eyes jet chips set in smiling squints. There was a stunning vitality to him, as though he breathed all the world’s air and only left enough for others by sheer benevolence. He was powerful, chest fully twice as deep as a normal man’s, shoulders twice as broad. Great golden bands caught his sleeves in the dip between biceps and deltoids, and his neck was dark with obscure tattoos. Instead of a chest plate, he wore a vest of tawny fur, and a broad and battered sword belt from which hung two long blades. Hreshtek, thought Lazlo, and his hands closed around the phantom hilts of apple bough swords. He felt the texture of them, their precise weight and balance as he’d twirled them over his head. The memories flooded him. It had been fifteen years, but it might have been fifteen minutes since his hundred routed foes fled through the frost.
Long ago, when he was still wild. When he was powerful.
He scanned the sky but saw no sign of the ghostly bird. The courtyard was dead silent, save for the hooves of the horses. The spectrals made no sound, moving with dancers’ grace. A footman opened the carriage door and, when the queen appeared in it, Master Ellemire, head of the Scholars’ Guild and director of the Great Library, took her hand and helped her down. He was a big, swaggering man with a thunderous voice, but he blanched before the new arrivals, at a loss for words. And then, from the direction of the Chrysopoesium, came the ring of boot heels. The long, sure stride.
A wave of heads turned toward the sound. Lazlo didn’t have to look. Everything clicked into place. The requisition of his books made sudden sense, and he understood that Thyon would not have burned them or flown the pages off the widow’s walk like birds. He would have known of this extraordinary visit in advance. He would have read them. He would have prepared. Of course.
He came into view, walking briskly. He paused to kiss the hand of his godmother, and offered a brief bow to Master Ellemire before turning to the Tizerkane as though he were the library’s representative and not the older man. “Azer meret, Eril-Fane,” he said, his voice smooth and strong. “Onora enet, en shamir.”
Well met, Eril-Fane. Your presence is our honor. Lazlo heard it as though from a distance. It was the traditional greeting of guests in Unseen. Learned, word for word, from his books.
It had taken him years to develop a working dictionary of Unseen, and more to unlock the probable pronunciation of its alphabet. Years. And Thyon stood there and spoke that phrase as though it were just lying around, knowable, as common as any pebble picked up off the ground, rather than the rare and precious gem it was.
The warrior—Eril-Fane, Thyon had called him—was amazed to find himself greeted in his own language, and immediately responded in kind. And your welcome is our blessing, was what he said. Lazlo understood. It was the first Unseen he had ever heard from a native speaker, and it sounded just as he’d always imagined it would: like calligraphy, if calligraphy were written in honey.
If Lazlo had understood his words, though, Thyon did not. He covered well, spouting a pleasantry before shifting into Common Tongue to say, “This is a day such as dreams are made of. I never thought to set eyes on a Tizerkane warrior.”
“I see it’s true what they say of the Great Library of Zosma,” Eril-Fane replied, shifting to Common Tongue as well. His accent on its smooth syllables was like a patina on bronze. “That the wind is in your employ, and blows all the world’s knowledge to your door.”
Thyon laughed, quite at ease. “If only it were so simple. No, it’s a good deal more work than that, but if it is knowable, I daresay it is known here, and if it is half as fascinating as your history, then it is also savored.”
Eril-Fane dismounted and another warrior followed suit: a tall, straight woman who stood like a shadow to him. The rest remained mounted, and their faces weren’t impassive like the ranks of Zosma soldiers. They were as vivid, each one, as their general’s—sharp with interest, and alive. It made a marked difference. The Zosma guards were like mounted statues, eyes blank and fixed on nothing. They might have been minted, not born. But the Tizerkane looked back at the scholars looking at them, and the faces framed by ravid fangs, though fierce, were also fascinated. Avid, even hopeful, and above all, human. It was jarring. It was wonderful.
“This is not the first stop on our sojourn,” Eril-Fane said, his voice like rough music. “But it is the first in which we have been greeted with familiar words. I came seeking scholars, but had not anticipated that we might ourselves be a subject of scholarly interest.”
“How could you doubt it, sir?” said Thyon, all sincerity. “Your city has been my fascination since I was five years old, playing Tizerkane in the orchard, and felt its name… plucked from my mind.”
Sometimes a moment is so remarkable that it carves out a space in time and spins there, while the world rushes on around it. This was one such. Lazlo stood stunned, a white noise roaring in his ears. Without his books, his room felt like a body with its hearts cut out. Now his body felt like a body with its hearts cut out.
There was more. The queen and Master Ellemire joined in. Lazlo heard it all: the concern and abiding interest they took in the far, fabled city and its mysteries, and with what excitement they had met the news of this visit. They were convincing. No one listening would suspect they hadn’t given Weep a moment’s thought until a few weeks ago. No doubt the assembled scholars were wondering how they could have been ignorant of such deep and long-standing interest on the part of their guild master and monarch—who, it was to be noted by the keen-eyed among them, wore a priceless new tiara of lys atop her stiff, graying curls.
“So, sir,” said Master Ellemire, perhaps trying to wrest authority from Thyon. “What news of Weep?”