See the mountain: Fat and strong, standing lone with good posture high above the sea. White cap on its head and the Three-Quarter City draped around it like a mighty dress.
Only a single temple in the No-Man Quarter and a single entrance to match it. A large, pretty gate, big even for Saprekk men, that meets a bridge and then a tower rising out of the noble’s enclosure.
See the Blue Quarter: Not heavenly enough for water dust, but the air thin and cold, appropriate for divine-blood. A place of wide roads and high walls and many small castles with floors numbering past three to four, even five! Everything white and blue and clean.
Below the ramparts and guards patrolling, see the Merchant Quarter: Buildings that rise and squash together instead of spreading wide. Cobblestone roads weaving round their feet, rising and plunging and converging unexpectedly, as though drunk and not sure where they mean to go. Flat roofs with chairs and tables. A roof with steps to another roof.
See everywhere people walking, sitting, talking among friends or neighbor, discussing wise things or sipping coffee or pepper wine. See young men in tailored skirts and breeches, pretty girls with tiger eye earrings. See every man wearing a beard and no woman with breast uncovered, not even to nurse her baby.
See the boy: He is slim and strong, like a sword or a serpent. He has copper hair and crooked teeth, which he bares in a grin—he is smiling! He is also sweating. He is breathless, racing through the streets and he is fast, faster than the princeling boys.
The Three-Quarter City doesn’t have princedoms anymore, but divine blood still means something to its people, to its laws. This to say, a pair of bored princelings in a mood to watch something bleed catch their eye on you? You run.
So he is running. He can hear them shout and argue as they track him through alley and under cart. Past people going ‘bout their day. Hear them swearing, invoking, demanding. Annoyed calls and other loose words slung at him and passing merchant-folk and one-another as they jockey and howl through the streets like mad dogs.
See the boy laughing. He is laughing because he is faster than them, and because when it comes down between divine blood and mortal flesh? The flesh knows the city better.
But these are strong, noble boys, unlikely to tire on the quick, and now their chase has strayed to corners of the Merchant Quarter the boy does not know.
He comes to a street much too large and much too empty of people. He can hear their loud voices coming down the mountain, not far behind. He must get out of this big street before—too late! They have him in their eyes now, and they are gaining on him.
The boy hops a small fence to a restaurant patio, making a line through the ohhs and gasps of people eating. He is kicking off the back ledge when he hears them round the patio and spot him again.
Beyond the restaurant is a steep hill and he lets himself fall and tumble down it. The work of gravity buys him time and breath, but he squanders it on an unlucky turn down an alley that ends in a canal.
He stops, looks all around. Shops and trees and stairs and old men smoking on their stoops on the far side, but nothing on his! Not a bridge, not a boat, not even a path along the canal to run. He turns to go back the way he came, find some other avenue—and stops again. They the ones grinning now, coming down the alley slow.
See the boy: Not giving up.
He turns, runs, does not hesitate. He runs to the edge of solid ground and he leaps.
See the boy. He is gliding. For a moment he is only body. Only the bend of knees and arch of back. No fear, no breath. No sound of hateful princes shouting or old men oohhing ’cross the way. And then there is no boy at all. Only limbs and breeze, and the slow, rapid motion of descent.
He lie in the hard embrace of cobblestone for some seconds, then realize he is not hurt and sit up, looking back across the canal. He grins.
One of them shouting fury, swearing all kind of violent oath. The other just pacing, mad, knowing he lose and glaring at the boy like I’m gonna remember this.
The boy stands, bows to the merchant men who laugh and give him small applause, then go running home.
See the Shallow Quarter: Square, squat buildings packed so close to the thrash some of them in it, standing up on wood legs or metal. Most of it homes, most one floor. So far down the mountain heat chase away dew before dawn breaks and by noon dogs go falling down in the shade, so people go in wraps or naked. See them haggling, praying, settling dowry or scolding child. Some playing drum or lying drunk in the leaf litter.
The mountain lay bare in the Shallow Quarter, not easy to run on like cobblestone, but his feet know the ground and he run easy through the narrow corridors that count for street, greeting neighbor and dodging reprimand til he break out from the city and find the harbor.
See the boat: Long and thin like the boy who belongs to it. Pale blue paint all but gone, maroon gunwale. Prow-roofed cabin at the back spacious enough for two benches, but most it just deck. Seven cleats and seven wood perches mounted beside.
See the father: Tying quick, careful knots at the throat of great birds. Not so tight to strangle, but tight enough to stop them swallowing what they catch. They are strong, splendid animals. Stubborn as old men and personalities big as they are.
When night start to rise and the fishing is done, probably the father can be heard talking at them like a second set of children. Scolding this one while it squawk and flap, praising that other for catching so much, rewarding her with extra dinner. While the sun still high, though, he is all business.
See him send them up into the blue. Circling together for two turns, then they dive. First one, then another, and the next. One by one dropping out of open sky into the lush. Piercing the canopy narrow and coming up strong, mouths full of things they know worth the dive.
See the beauty: Verdant Sea shivering in the wind, holding up its fingertips to the light. See the calm. Hear the empty quiet as canopy stretches out to meet sky in all direction, making even the mountain look small perched up on horizon.
Now this man and his birds filling up the air with their conversation. Him ringing out commands. Shouting, whooping, whistling and singing. And them yelling back like they know what he saying!
When they come up with mollusks, he welcomes them with a happy song. He pries catch from mouth and sends them off again, back into the sky and bough.
Merchant cooks and noble-house firemen trade generously for mollusk flesh. It is not so hard to catch, but to clean. If the mollusk die before its venom sac removed, the meat is spoiled and the flesh kills whoever eat it. For safe cleaning, you must cut open, and in the same cut sever sac from cord. All of it fast, before the mollusk die.
See the m——. See the mother. She is quick with a knife, working with none of her husband’s voice but twice his focus. The punishment for trading bad mollusk flesh is death, but she has been cleaning mollusks since she was the boy’s age. She holds, cuts, excises, separates flesh into bucket and sac to daughter.
See the girl: She is two summers wiser than the boy, sitting cross-legged by her mother with sharp pin and glass beaker eighth-full of sloshing venom. She is piercing the sacs, emptying poison into jar one at a time. Only some drops in each and none of it of use to any kind of person worth knowing, but every two or three moons they heap enough to brew special inks that scholar-folk trade well for.
See the mother pile up venom sac faster than the girl can pierce them. She is still young enough for fear, so she is working careful more than working quick. Mollusk venom only fatal when you eat it, but the Shallow Quarter is full of old women with digits missing and sad memory for those who not notice mollusk-hand in time to cut it out. So she is working careful, making sure no drops touch her skin.
See the boy, walking on waves. Balancing, humming. Picking berry and useful shrub, tucking them in pockets. He has a bag slung across his shoulder, and he follows the birds to their breaching spots, stepping with bare feet careful ’round the amberblack and new growth, hunting for mollusk shells cast away by beak and talon.
He is watching the sky, the sea. Hearing his father talk to birds. Feeling branch underfoot and the hot sun on neck and shoulder. He is chewing sorrel and wondering what they will eat for dinner and what he will do after. He is thinking how nice the breeze feel and how pretty the sky and sea look together.
Then a crack and lurch, and things falling so quick it does not matter that he hesitates.
See the boy. He is falling. For a moment he is only body. Only the drop of stomach and eyes going wide. No sound of birds calling, or fathers. And then there is no boy at all. Only limbs and breeze, and the slow, rapid motion of descent.