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Synopsis

The magical island of Chynchin is facing conquerors from abroad and something sinister from within...

Veycosi, in training as a griot (an historian and musician), hopes to sail off to examine the rare Alamat Book of Light and thus secure a spot for himself on Chynchin's Colloquium of scholars. However, unexpected events prevent that from happening. Fifteen Ymisen galleons arrive in the harbor to force a trade agreement on Chynchin. Veycosi tries to help, hoping to prove himself with a bold move, but quickly finds himself in way over his head.

Bad turns to worse when malign forces start stirring. Children are disappearing and an ancient invading army, long frozen into piche statues by island witches is stirring to life - led by the fearsome demon known as the Blackheart Man.

Veycosi has problems in his polyamorous personal life, too. How much trouble can a poor student take? Or cause all by himself.

Excerpt

Chapter 1

Carenage Town, the island nation of Chynchin

HERE AT THE TOP of Cullybree Heights, the stone statue honouring the twin goddess Mamacona loomed out over the ocean. She was carved in the form of two caimans, standing back to back on their hind legs, clawed front legs reaching out to embrace or to scourge. The caiman facing seawards was Mamagua, her jewelled eyes and pointed teeth the deep blue of lapis. Facing inland was Mamapiche, eyes and teeth a gleaming black obsidian. Each sister had a powerful caiman tail curled around her feet.

The fore-day morning sea was a deep, cold blue. Mama Sea was cheerful on the surface of Her vast, shifting self; whitecaps dancing towards the port in fishscale recursives, like slatterns kicking up their skirts to show their knickers. But beneath those knickers, ah, what? Salty depths that had swallowed many a somebody who surfaced changed, or surfaced not at all. What might be down there in the deep? You didn't need to sink too far into the water before the sombre blue shaded even darker to navy, then deep night, then full, cold blackness.

Veycosi shuddered. Best to let women be the fishers. Take to their rudders to ride the sea. They understood Her better.

Straddling the wide clay outlet pipe that took fresh water from the Cullybree Heights reservoir to the south side of Carenage Town, he scooted a little farther along it. He had to be quick. As soon as the sun was fully up, other people would start visiting Carenage Town's big reservoir, whether maintenance workers, people hunting the iguanas that were plentiful in the brush up here, or people fishing the reservoir for frogs and mullet. Every so often, Veycosi knocked on the pipe. Each thump netted him a juddering thud, as when you knocked on the green rind of a watermillion to test its ripeness. He'd been right, then; there was water in this pipe, too, as in the other five he'd tested. That was well. But he could also tell that the water wasn't moving; when he'd done this same procedure a few minutes ago with the five other massive pipes that fed the other areas of Carenage Town, he hadn't even needed to thump on them. The water filling them was running so strong that when he straddled each pipe, he could feel the powerful thrum of the flow against his haunches, like the stroke of a masterful lover. In this sixth pipe, however, the water was still; there must be a blockage somewhere farther down.

Stale water made for ill humours. Every day the town elders didn't let him act, they risked an outbreak of cholera or bottle leg disease in Carenage. And if South Carenage sickened, it could spread to North, West, and East Carenage, Blueing, and Cassava Downs.

Veycosi kept knocking against the pipe, advancing as he went.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Thump.

A flat sound, with no answering resonance. Was that the blockage?

He moved forwards a little more, knocking the while. He hadn't gone more than thirty handsbreadths when his knock fetched a third sound; a low, hollow clang. The quality of the sound told him that from that section onwards, the pipe was empty. And as he'd suspected, the blockage was right at the point where the pipe turned to begin its gentle dip down to Carenage Town's south side. Likely a build-up of matter blown into the reservoir during Chynchin's long dry season. Council members were addlepates, every last one of them. Refusing his petition to try out his idea for getting the water flowing again. Instead, they wanted to wait until the rainy season, which should arrive in a few sennights. The council hoped that the weight of extra water from the rains would flush the pipe clear. The histories sang of only a few times pipes from the reservoir had become blocked, and each time, the weight of water pressing against the blockage had quickly cleared it. But this time, it had been going on for months. In the meantime, South Carenage, the bustling centre of town, had to fetch water from the river in buckets. And there was an ever-present smell of rot from still sewers. Next it'd be mosquitos breeding, their larvae wiggling in the putrid water. Then sickness. Thandy, his and Gombey's fiancée, lived there, in the centre of town. This thing had to be fixed, and now. He would make the air down there sweet again, make the water flow. Thandy would be proud and show him favour once more, as she used to. She'd seemed cool towards him for some weeks now. He had no idea why. He was training to be a chanter of knowledge that others might employ it. The council had reminded him he was a chantwell, and a student one at that. Said he was not an ingenieur. Said he shouldn't be meddling in the business of builders.

Fuck that. He could reckon instructions as well as anyone with a brain. Could chant the first five chapters of Mauretaine's book Of Divers Matters on Constructing Wells, Pipes, and Sewers, beginning to end and back again, the full tenor main part. He and his classmates had studied its song last year. But he hadn't had to memorize the section on clearing blocked pipes; that part was for the sopranos of his line.

Veycosi was beginning to slaver around the selfsame book he'd brought out onto the pipe with him, clenched between his teeth. He released it into his hand and opened it to the place he'd marked by slipping a z'avocade leaf in between the pages. The vellum binding creaked as the book opened. The ancient handmade paper of the pages gave off the usual dusty library smell, so sweet and exciting to his nose, it nearly made him hard every time he scented it. The book's handwritten ink was fading; good thing he and his line at the Colloquium were committing it to memory, setting it to music so the song might spread on the winds like Mamacona's breath. That way, the knowledge the book contained might never be forgotten.

He reread the instructions on the page. Yes, rap on the pipes for soundness. He'd already done that and verified that it wasn't cracked. Open the sluice of the blocked pipe. He'd done that before he'd mounted the pipe. Drop some dye into the reservoir water now, very near the inlet of the suspect pipe. Thence he must watch and see where it did and didn't flow. Ingenious, that. He pulled the bottle of indigo out of his sleeve pocket, removed the cork, and emptied the bottle into the reservoir water, as close to the pipe as possible. Slowly, a thread of it began to spiral downwards, away from the spreading circle of blue on the surface and towards the inlet below. So the pipe wasn't completely blocked. Presently, though, he saw his mistake in using indigo. Blue dye, blue water, sombre morning light. The thinner the indigo spread, the less he could see it, until he couldn't make out the dye at all.

No matter. He'd learned what it had to tell him. Time for the next part of the instructions.

Veycosi humped back along the pipe, towards the service steps from the reservoir to the ground below. He refused to think on how his movement resembled that of a cat with a wormy behind. Good thing Thandy couldn't see his undignified dismount from his water pipe steed.

Standing on the top step, he looked around. Still no one up here but him and the birds. Half-seen flashes of iridescence laced with brown and green, the cullybrees flitted around him in their endless, wheeling flight. Truth was, the council had another reason for waiting till rainy season to think about the blocked pipe. They didn't want to risk disrupting the cullybree eggs and ruining the annual Cullybree Festival. The cullybree chicks would hatch soon as the season turned fully from dry to rainy. Already they'd had a slight drizzle or two this month, but it was tapu to disturb the cullybree nests. Laying cullybrees tipped their eggs onto moss-lined crags on the northeastern face of the Heights, a furlong or so farther off. The foolish had a way to say that touching a cullybree nest would bring the world to an end. Chuh. Credulous gullwits. Any road, he was nowhere near the nests. He would get this thing done, then be off tomorrow on the ship to Ifanmwe, where the Colloquium's book trader was holding a copy of the Alamat Book of Light for him. That tome hadn't been seen for near on five centaines! The Colloquium had thought it long gone, lost to the sea when the siege of Ifanmwe had seen that country's fine library put to the torch. Seventeen hundred books and scrolls burned. The histories sang that the clouds above the burned shell of the Ifanmwe library had been black for three days with paper ash. Knowledge destroyed. It was abominable to even think on.

Veycosi had heard that in the mountains above Ifanmwe, two oceans away, it was so cold in their wet season that rain hardened in midair and fell to the ground as a fine white powder. He'd always longed to see that. And to taste it. Steli said they creamed the stuff with yak's milk and honey to make a divine confection. Veycosi was soon to become a fully fledged Fellow of the Colloquium of the nation of Chynchin. He had only to fetch a rare book for the Colloquium Council. The Alamat book was the prize that would bring him closer to that fellowship. Bring it home, take the dreaming draught that would give him a Reverie, and then he would be a full chantwell. Once he was a Fellow, he would be free to travel the world, collecting and preserving the written knowledge of history. To be on the sea! He'd only done so once, as a youngboy. He still remembered standing at the bow, the tang of salt spray on his lips.

Back at the reservoir wall, he tucked the book into his sleeve, which was turned and hemmed to form a deep pocket. From the foot of the reservoir steps he fetched the three unfired clay jars he'd brought with him from the market, each about the size of a baby's head. He had calculated it all, based on Mauretaine's figures. Five measures of phosphorus powder in each jar. The water would seep in, react with the phosphorus, and explode. He was going to create a swell of water within the reservoir, perhaps five handspans high. The extra pressure would push more water through the pipes and hopefully clear the blocked one. It would take some little while for the water to dissolve the jars' raw clay and ignite the phosphorus. That would give him time to get down off the cliff--briskly, mind!

Not that there was much danger. He had tried a version of this at one-fiftieth size. Based on that experiment, he had perhaps nine minutes to get down from Cullybree Hill. Add one minute for margin of error, and he still had plenty time. He might make it all the way down into Carenage Town before the thing blew, so no one would know he had caused it.

He grinned to himself. Of course they would suspect who was responsible. After all, when mischief came at the run to Carenage Town, wasn't it usually he, Veycosi, nipping at its heels? But by then the water would be running again, and they would be grateful. And if they weren't; well, he'd be long gone on a ship bound for Ifanmwe, headed for the marvels of iced cream and the Alamat Book of Light. He'd return with his standing well secure at the Colloquium, and his little jackanape forgotten.

Flush with the righteousness of doing a needful thing, no matter who would gainsay it, Veycosi rose to his feet on the large bole of the pipe. He dropped the three sealed jars into the reservoir. They bobbed on the surface of the water, which would soon begin to dissolve the clay. The jars began at once to darken with wetness. Now he'd best be gone down the hill. It was all safe, but prudence, valour, et cetera. Quick as he could, he minced along the pipe.

The sun was just about risen. Something in the ocean caught the corner of Veycosi's eye.

There was a fleet heading briskly for the bay below. Some fifteen galleons; and flying Ymisen colours! Veycosi startled and nearly lost his balance. He daren't fall into the bombed water! His arms pinwheeled, sending his squared sleeve flaps semaphoring around his body. His smooth leather slippers slid on the clay pipe. He tilted. Desperately righted himself as Mauretaine's ancient book Of Divers Matters slipped from his sleeve, tumbled into the water, and disappeared from view. It was the only copy in existence! He shouldn't even have removed it from the library. For a Colloquium student to actually destroy one of its precious tomes! He could well be drummed out of the Colloquium for this. His adventure had just progressed from jackanape to infamy.

Jittering in shock on the pipe, he considered for an instant diving after the book. Its parchment pages would remain intact, but even now, the inked words inside would be dissolving into the water.

The water into which he had just introduced three bombs. It would be folly to leap in.

The fleet would soon enter the bay. Its foremasts, mains, and mizzens rose like spears from the ships' decks. Veycosi's scalp prickled. Ymisen. The country that had stolen his Cibonn' ancestors' lands and press-ganged them into slavery, along with people from Ilife and some unfortunates from Ymisen itself. But the ships were flying trade flags. Since when had Ymisen decided to quit its sanctions on Chynchin?

Home! After so many years, to be home. Standing on the deck of the Ymisen ship the Empire Star, Androu couldn't still his traitor heart from leaping in his breast at the sight of the graceful sweep of Carenage Bay, the cocoanut and gru-gru bef palms blowing in a gentle breeze, the cullybree birds circling on the drafts in the air above. So long since he had set foot on Chynchin soil.

The captain gave the order for the sailor to run up the flags that would signal to the rest of the fleet to break away. Those ships would put in at deserted Boar Island a short distance away. They would load up with fresh water, hunt boar and dry the meat, and wait until they were sent for. Then they would arrive in force and take this wretched island of Chynchin. Turn it back into Ymisen territory, of sorts. That is, if the new Ymisen regime would acknowledge Tierce's right to succeed to the throne, now that it had deposed Tierce's father.

The steersman longingly eyed the bay. They had been weeks at full sail. Standing nearby with the captain, Advisor Gunderson stared at the bay too, and grunted his relief.

Well he might. They would get their precious passenger safely to their destination after all. All this for a book. But the trip would bring Androu, finally, his revenge.

The captain called out, "Full ahead!" to the steersman.

So busy were Androu's eyes taking in the sight of Chynchin Island that he nearly overlooked the small spinning swirls of foam a scant few ells in front of them. Two smaller circles lay in a line pointing at them, leading to the largest one, which was closest to the bay. When Androu did notice them, the back of his neck prickled. "Hard to!" he yelled at the steersman. "Now!" Gods blast it, they were about to run up on Mamagua's Pearls!

The steersman squinted at him but looked to the captain for his orders. The captain and Gunderson gave Androu a suspicious glare. Damned Ymisen prigs like Gunderson would never trust him, for all that he had blood such as theirs running in his veins. "Heave to!" Androu barked. "You'll have us run aground!" Fear-sweat crawled beneath his collar.

Datiao drew breath! At last! But straitway he met the blockage; no air to fill his lungs, no way for his chest to expand even had there been air in it. All he got for his pains was a hot honey-trickle of black piche sliding into his nose and tickling down the back of his throat. His body spasmed, but there was no way to cough so as to expel the piche. How long he had been embalmed this way in sludgy blackness?

Long enough for him to unlearn the habit of breathing. But it had come back to him just now. All it needed was air for him to practise the skill proper. Then the three bitches would rue their borning days.

Veycosi realised he had been standing still on the pipe, transfixed in shock at the sight of the Ymisen ships. He'd lost track of how much time he had before the water dissolved the clay jars. Nine minutes, fifty seconds? Nine thirty-eight? His heart swelled his throat near shut. Teetering a little, he hotfooted it to the end of the pipe, jumped down, and broke into a pounding run down the path. Nine minutes, twenty-two seconds? Twenty-one? The foot of the hill was looking farther away than it had on his way up here.

Eight minutes, fifty-eight seconds, fifty-seven... Soon, he was scurrying down the part of the footpath along the very edge of Cullybree Hill that led down to the town. Eight thirty-two... He glanced up to the top of the ridge, where the jars in the reservoir were surely dissolving.

There was going to be hell to pay for losing the book. Maybe he'd be able to fish it out once this was all over. Perhaps some of the words would have survived.

"?'Ware ships!" he yelled to the town below. Not that they could hear him at this distance. He leapt over a patch of prickly scrub that was barring his way. He skidded on slippery moss on the other side. His feet slipped out from under him. He landed hard on one hip, the breath exploding from his lungs. Before he could brace himself, he slid out over the edge of the cliff. His legs kicked air. He scrabbled at the ground, at the skittering rockstones his fall had dislodged, at anything, anything!

He managed to grab a sapling. It whipped through his hands, skinning his palms. Frantic, he tightened his grip. The greenstick sapling cracked, but didn't break. He blinked dirt out of his eyes and looked up at it. Its roots were starting to pull free. He dug his elbows into the lip of rock and paddled his feet around, feeling for purchase. But there was only air.

He twisted his body to look down over his shoulder. Red dirt cliffside all the way to the water. The black, deep water.

Rocks dislodged by his fall were bouncing at speed down the cliff. One of the rockstones sprang away from the hillside. He was up so high, he didn't hear the splash when it hit the sea surface. Sweat trickled down the back of his neck. His shoulders burned with the strain of carrying his own weight. If he let go, he would fall into the bay, likely crack his spine like a twig when he hit the water from such a great height.

There! One foot had found a solid place. He jammed the foot into a shallow crevice in the rock. A breeze ran chilly fingers up under his robe. He still couldn't lever himself up. And he'd lost complete track of how much time had passed. "Help!" he bellowed, into the echoing bell of flesh made by his chest and arms pressed against the cliff face. A gusty updraft plucked at his hair and at the hem of his robe. His hands were slipping down the length of the sapling. Six minutes, forty-seven seconds left? Forty-six?

"Help!"

Androu clutched at the polished wooden shell he always kept on a thong around his neck, hidden beneath his shirts; his soul case. It had been with him from birth. Mama-ji willing, it would be with him when he died. Which might be this very morning, if they didn't listen to him now. He cursed himself for forgetting about the Pearls.

He pointed to the left of the peaceful bay, to a narrow, muddy outlet of the Iguaca River. The river mouth had more twists and turns than Mamagua's tail. "We mun go that way!" he yelled at the captain, over the sound of the creaking ropes. "North by northwest, fifteen degrees! Quick, man! Else we'll founder on the rocks under us!" He indicated the line of eddying whirlpools. The sharp, hidden rocks of Mamagua's Pearls had torn the hull out of many a would-be marauder ship. What appeared to be the easiest way to approach Carenage Town by water was in fact the most deadly. "And run up the trade flags, sharp now!"

Advisor Gunderson nodded his permission. The captain peered through his spyglass. "North by northwest, fifteen degrees!" he bellowed at the steersman, who hung hard over. No time to measure out their course change. His face lined with doubt, the steersman set the ship leaping past the bay on a course towards the narrow inlet.

Androu threw his own weight onto the wheel to help them hold their course. They swept past the Pearls, so close that the ship's starboard side was almost in the first eddy before she turned. Androu could feel the drag on the wheel, feel her struggling to break free of the whirlpool. "Come along now, old girl," he muttered to her as he and the steersman held the wheel to. "Ye'd make poor firewood, all soaked with salt as ye are. Take me home, girl."

The ship shuddered and leapt free of the whirlpool. Androu blew out a breath, let his shoulders creep down from around his ears. He stepped back from the wheel. The steersman muttered a grudging thanks. Androu wiped his brow with his sleeve. "Put her into the bay, there," he said.

Androu stood on the deck of the ship and watched as the place he'd fled in anger some two decades before drew him in again.

Home.

Datiao tried to close his thoughts to the old memory of being mired, still on his donkey, in hot, suddenly liquid piche where there had been a flat road instants before. Of the screams and the sucking noises around him as the others were bucking up upon the same fate. Of sinking chest-deep before he could even think to fight his way free. The manic dying struggles of the donkey below him, between his thighs. One of those thighs, pressed between the kicking beast and the engulfing piche, being snapped like a stick of sugarcane. The howl of agony that had filled his mouth with black, tarry ooze as the piche closed over his head. And then the desperate sucking and sucking for breath--

No. It was done. He had died, and now air was no longer sovereign to him. He would have wept, if he could.

But though he couldn't cry tears, he could and did curse himself for losing his nerve as he'd ridden out with the foreign soldiers that day, disguised as one of them, to march upon his own fellows. Had he only kept muttering the witches' protective chantson as he had planned, the road might have stayed solid under them and he might not be in this simmering hell, surrounded by the bodies of the defeated. By reflex, he snarled.

And the very corner of his upper lip twitched. Such a tiny movement that he might have imagined it. Still, he strained again to repeat it.

And did.

Would that he could smile fully, laugh, caper about with glee for the joy of it! He could not; not yet. But his mouth was beginning to move!

Not just his mouth; the slow return of sensation brought with it a steady ache to Datiao's forcibly outstretched arm, its palm splayed open. But he blessed even that feeling. Against the sullen shifting of the piche, he had been moving his fingers, agonizing increments at a time, to grasp at the source of the object he could not see; the thing that had woken him again to this horror. The thing that was bringing life back to him, radiating from his outstretched hand to the rest of his body. Some while ago, three of his fingertips had just barely touched the edges of something solid. The power emanating from the object was glorious and terrifying in its strength. He had been reaching, straining to grasp it for oh, how long? He needed to curl his hand around the thing, whatever it was, to draw it closer to him. And in between, he never ceased trying to move the rest of him. He went on and on trying. Soon he would be able to form the words of the life-preserving chantson again, and when the thing for which he was reaching brought him back full to his capacities, the chantson would help him remain hale. If chance was with him finally, there were three blasted women he would show the meaning of rue in all its fullest. Not to mention that backwards piece of rock the escapees were pleased to call Chynchin. Running away with his fellow enslaved had eventually cost him his life, and for what?

He tried not to think on all the times before that life had returned to him, only to be wrested away again by the engulfing tar that still held him trapped as he died again, in the same agony of suffocation as the first time. He died, and died, and died. He supposed he'd been enduring like this for hours. This morning, his biggest worry had been whether he would survive the day. Now he feared he would be trapped for days, perhaps weeks!

He more felt than heard the deep sound that went gonging through the treacly piche, setting it to vibrating. What had happened above? Who was winning the skirmish between the soldiers and the village with its three witches?

There must be a particularly hot day's sun shining down on the piche from above, melting it some. The shuddering of the slowly liquefying piche made his position change, just a mite.

He found he could stretch his reaching arm a little bit farther. Good. Good. He strained and stretched his fingers till he felt sure their sinews would part from their joints.

And he touched it, first with scrabbling fingertips. And then he managed to curl his fingers around it until he was clutching it tightly in his fist.

Now, up. He didn't have much time. If he didn't reach air soon, he only had minutes of this unlife left. Without air, he would spend those minutes suffocating, as he had the first time. Already he could feel his death agonies creeping up on him again. With a mighty heave, he clawed a gobbet of softened piche to one side. Desperation lent him strength. Slow as justice and as blind, he began to claw his way up to the surface of doomed Chynchin.

The uprooted sapling slid a bit, then caught between two rockstones, held by its root ball. Veycosi tested the strength of it. It seemed solid, for now. Six minutes, nineteen seconds. Perhaps.

There. A bit higher up the cliff face and a little to the right was a place he might jam his foot, if he could reach it. Praying to Mamagua in wordless terror, he pulled himself up by the sapling. His arms were trembling so from fatigue that he feared he wouldn't be able to keep hold of it. But he had to. He started swinging his body side to side. He'd heard it sung that a pendulum would achieve a wider arc if a greater force were applied anywhere along its length. The force came from his body, from his determination not to fall and burst himself apart on the rocks below.

It took four sweeping tries before he was able to set his foot into the toehold, keep it there, and roll his body back onto the path.

Five minutes, thirty-nine seconds left? Thirty-eight? He couldn't lie there. He had to warn Chynchin. He pushed himself to his feet with arms whose muscles screamed for mercy. He began staggering down the hill again. He kept moving until he was in the valley. The buildings of Carenage Town were only a few yards in front of him. There was a street-side alarm bell right around that corner. Lungs screaming, legs trembling, he staggered on. "Ymisen," he wheezed.

Carenage Town's grey sand high road stretched out in front of Veycosi now, far as the eye could see. The street was busy, as it ever was: shops and businesses receiving custom all along the sides; covered stalls down the middle, dispensing bootlaces, boiled sweeties, and the like; and horse, camel, tricycle, and donkey traffic clattering along the twin lanes. Everywhere, people going about their business. He wove through it all like a drunken man. Nearly got stepped on by a camel. His lungpipes burned like they'd been washed with acid. His vision was blurred and the street sounds were getting muffled in his ears. He feared he might faint before he accomplished his duty. He could see the emergency bell on its pole, only a few yards away. Just a few more steps.

He was nearly to the other side of the street when a hand on his shoulder neatly moved him out of the way. It was a guard in his official garb of gold-embroidered red buba on top and matching sokoto trousers. Veycosi could have collapsed with relief. He started to croak out his warning.

"Stand back," the man said, his voice pitched to carry. Chuh. A chantwell with a phthisic could speak louder. Not Veycosi at the moment, though. He tried to insist, but his voice had shrunk to scarce the hiss of a piss in the wind. The guard chivvied him to the roadside, just as seven more guards, muskets at the ready, came in lockstep down the road. They flanked perhaps fifteen oddly dressed men they were marching in the direction of the city hall. They were moving slowly through the gathering crowd of curious Carenage Town citizens.

Veycosi made to stumble in the direction of the guards. "But there are ships," he wheezed. He'd been trying for a shout, but that was all he could manage. And the crowd was too thick.

A younggirl tugged at the sleeve of his robe. "Just one ship, mestre," she piped up. "A trade ship, from Ymisen."

He shook his head. "No, picken. A whole fleet, full armed."

From the fast-forming crowd on the sidewalk, a woman in a cobbler's apron said, "The other ships gone due west, maybe for Port Royal. So the lookout said. Only one ship made port."

The lookout, in the tower beside the Upper Piche. In his haste, he had forgotten about it. The lookout would have seen the ships and sent the news a-pigeon wing to Carenage while he was still dashing like a fool down the hill. And it was news, but maybe not danger. The trade ship would have travelled with the fleet for protection from pirates.

To put the cap on his ignominy, it looked like his plan for bringing water back to the town centre had failed. If the water had started running again, he would have heard the rumbling from the pipe as he came down the hill. For truth to tell, he had to admit to himself that his headlong dash down to the valley had taken at least three times longer than the clay flasks should have needed to dissolve. Chagrined, Veycosi kissed his teeth. He would just have to go up there tonight and try again. It was the only way to justify the loss of the Mauretaine. The way his arms and legs were trembling with fatigue, he wasn't sure how he would make that trek again. But he would. He couldn't delay; on the morrow he would be away from Chynchin.

The crowd carried Veycosi along. He wasn't far from the guards and the comess they were guarding. A band of foreign strangers, and they were well tall. Their skins were pinker even than those of Chynchin's Deserter Mirmeki people, whom they resembled. The demeanour of the pale ones was different, too, in a way difficult to name. They carried themselves with a swinging confidence, more like the men from the pirate ships that often came to Carenage Town to take their ease and give Chynchin their coin. Five of the strangers were apparently soldiers of some kind, fancy in red-and-blue uniforms--a blue lighter than indigo--their hands held carefully away from their weapons. Three-four of the rest were tanned from the sun and had the rolling walk of people of the sea. Those fellows wore sailors' canvas britches and shirts. The others were strangely dressed. Their kilts were familiar; they looked like the ones Deserter men wore. But the pantalons beneath, the straight, braided hair coiled into loops, the patterns inked onto some of their faces; those Veycosi had never seen. Those men must all be from the Ymisen ship. There were no women among them. Had they left the capitaine and crewe on board, then?

A tall, fat Ymisen man was at the front of their party. His cheeks were red and he was all in a sweat. Beside him walked some other fellows, and bringing up the rear, the shabbier-dressed ones Veycosi had marked as men who spent much of their lives on ships. They would be under the command of the capitaine of the ship. He supposed it made sense for her to remain aboard her vessel. She was responsible for it, after all.

The Ymisen men looked all around them as they went, pointing and chattering with each other.

"'Ey, banna!" a woman from the crowd called out. "You in the fancy hat!" She was hailing the man Veycosi had reckoned to be one of the capitaine's husbands. His hat was a sight, for true. Its grey brim cupped his head like a pair of hands and jutted out a good two handsbreadths all around. Its green crown was shaped like three mountains. The furry tail of some small beast or other was affixed to the crown, and hung flapping around his left ear. Such a confection would bake his head in Chynchin heat right quick.

The woman continued, "That ratshorn piece of sintin is the latest fashion in Ymisen these days?" People near her laughed, but the capitaine's dox never looked her way. Likely he couldn't understand her. Chynchin's tongue was cousin to theirs, but changed by the two centaines that separated Chynchin from ownership by Ymisen. It had been that long since any from Ymisen had openly set foot on this shore. Last thing Veycosi had expected to see was their old enemy, sailing into port as merry as you please. Two hundred years before, a small band of escaped slaves from the nearby Ymisen colonies had managed to defeat a troop of Ymisen soldiers and kill off most of them. From then, Ymisen had left Chynchin Island alone. Ymisen called it "embargo," but truth was, they were'fraid of Chynchin.'Fraid of the obeah that had routed Ymisen that day, at the hands of three escaped witch women, former slaves. For two hundred years Ymisen hadn't ventured onto Chynchin soil, for fear Chynchin would sic the piche on them again. "Mama-ji," Veycosi muttered, not exactly to the statue on the hill, "is what trouble come for we now?"

One of the party held irself a little apart from the others. Smooth features, clean-shaven. Ee had big, veined hands. Body of middling size. Ee could have been a shortish man or a tallish woman; Veycosi couldn't rightly tell. Ymisen clothing was so strange that what the person wore gave few clues. Ee looked around calmly, ir eyes curious. Ee was sweating a river, but didn't seem to pay it any mind. The sailing men hung back little bit from ir. Veycosi would have sworn they feared ir. And ee was carrying a book. A volume so small that ir hands mostly concealed it. Veycosi glimpsed a brown cover, perhaps of wood, but nothing more.

The person's two eyes made four with Veycosi's. Ee grinned, joy bursting like sunshine forth from ir face. Ee waved at Veycosi like the two of them were lifelong bannas. Ee pointed at Veycosi, indicating his robe, the plain tan of an aspirant to the Colloquium. So catching ir merriness was that Veycosi found his hand creeping up to return the wave.

"You know that one?" asked a man standing near Veycosi. His tone was suspicious. He had bronzed Cibonn' features like Veycosi's. His linen buba and the hems of his sokoto were embroidered with the sibidi of some respectable establishment. He was a slow market agent, then, shilling the products of a market supplier whose goods he endorsed.

"Not me," Veycosi replied. He jerked his chin in the direction of the people from the ship. "What a-go on with those fellows?"

The man shrugged. "Nobody really know yet. Pigeons come down from the lookout little bit ago with a message that they were arriving. After that, the excitement start."

Come the second bells of the afternoon, the giant clay water tubes that ringed Chynchin would carry the news all around the island, to every town and village.

The man said, "Seem they from Ymisen!"

Veycosi sighed. "I know."

A plump dame on his other side leaned over. "Those men come from off it?" she asked. "Off the Ymisen ship?" Her eyes were avid. She waved a delicate fan at her face. Even from where he was standing, Veycosi could smell the oversweet perfume scenting it.

"Is true," he said. His breathing was finally beginning to slow after his dash down the hill.

"Flying trading colours, they say," the man told them. "What a thing! Ymisen seeking trade with us!"

The guard marched the lot of the Ymisen farther along the street. The crowd closed in behind them.

But Veycosi had other business. To the man and woman, he said, "Good walk, goodman, siani." He turned on his heel to take his leave of them. The effect would have had more grace if he hadn't stumbled over the alpagat strap he'd torn in his rush down the hill.

A thoom! sound like thunder shoved at Veycosi's ears. Reflexively, he ducked. Someone near him gasped. A startled bicycle rider lost control of his machine and spun out in the dusty street, colliding with two others and bringing them clattering down, too. A man squealed in alarm. A passing camel twitched its ears back, in the direction of Cullybree Heights. A youngboy riding on a man's shoulders pointed up at the Heights. "Da!" he cried out. "Water, Da!" Alarmed cullybrees were winging away from the hill, screeching their fear.

Another explosion slapped the air, then a third hard upon it. From his squatting position, Veycosi saw it; the water in the reservoir rose above its containing wall and slammed back down again, with a reverberating crash like Mamagua slapping her caiman tail against the surface of a river.

"To rass," muttered Veycosi. "Too much phosphorus, I think." Still, he wagered the south side was getting good and plenty fresh water now. He stood, smiling, and raised his arms. "You see, allyou?" he called to those nearby him. "That's all we needed to do. Two-three little flasks of a certain powder, and the reservoir fix up good-good."

With a bang, the cistern atop a nearby spectacles shop blew its lid. Veycosi's neck-back goose-bumped as he watched the big clay plate that was the cistern lid wing a glittery flurry of hazel green-brown in the air. A cullybree! Was it injured?

There were voices screaming and shouting, people running out of the spectacles shop. A suspicious brown ooze sludged about their ankles. The alarmed voices came to Veycosi as though there were stout walls between them and him. The explosion had closed up his ears. He looked around frantically. Had a small, sacred bird body fallen to the ground?

Whipping edge over edge, the cistern lid sailed down to break itself over the spine of a donkey tied nearby. Veycosi threw his arm over his face to protect himself from flying clay shards. The donkey grunted and dropped to its knees. Water from the cistern cascaded down over the roof of the shop and crashed into the street. Pieces of something wet and fleshy smacked Veycosi in the face and stuck against his cheek. He put his hand to his face to brush it clear, and felt small, sharpish scales. He pulled his hand away, shuddering as he shook off the thing that had stuck to it. The piece fell into the folds of the scarf around his neck. Frantically, Veycosi clawed it away until it fell to the wet dirt at his feet. A lengthwise half of a fish, neatly filleted. Just a fish. Not a sacred cullybree. Despite the comess around him, Veycosi felt he could breathe again.

All along the high street, cisterns and shit-holes were leaking, some of them erupting. People got lazy during dry season, didn't take care to close cisterns properly or keep their pipe filters clean. Then the first day of rainy season would come, and of course there were overflows just like this, though belike less explosive.

Veycosi had brought a taste of rainy season to Carenage Town, is all. Wasn't as though the world's waters had risen up to swallow the earth. Everything would be all right. It was only a fish the cistern lid had killed.

A siani over there was struggling with two damp, bawling pickens, trying to hustle them out of the muck. Veycosi took a step forwards to help her. His sandaled foot landed on a small something that rolled and gave beneath his sole.

Veycosi lifted his foot and looked down. A fat frog writhed in the mud at his feet, one leg trailing, broken either by the cistern lid or his heedless foot. Its mouth opened and closed soundlessly.

The siani with the pickens was closer now. "I heard you just now," she said, her voice angry. "You say is you cause this?"

She wasn't the only one who had heard. Other people were looking at him, their faces screwed up in suspicion. Someone tugged on a guard's sleeve and pointed in Veycosi's direction. The guard tucked her tanned bull-cod cudgel under her arm and started running his way. She called out, "Mestre? A word?"

Damn and blast. For the second time that day, a weary Veycosi took to his heels, pushing through the crowd as he went. Behind him, he could hear people calling for him to stop.

As they neared the inlet, the sailors began to mutter nervously at the sight of all the toothy, snouted caimans sunning themselves out of the water. But Androu knew the beasts were lazy to attack anything less small and helpless than a squawking hen. As a boy, he'd played dares with his bannas to see how many crocs sunning on the riverbank they could punch on the snout before running away again.

The timing of their arrival was well. It was late in the morning, but a few of the fisherfolk's boats were on the water. They would witness Ymisen's triumphant arrival. Two or three had already spotted them. Some had slowed and turned about to watch their progress. He could imagine the astonishment on the faces of the women in their boats, and of the one or two men some of them had with them as crew. He wished there had been more fisherwomen. As well to begin with them, out of all those in Chynchin who had ever stood in his way. He wished he could take the helm of this grand ship. That would show the fisher-bitches that a man of Chynchin could steer the seas as well as any woman. He was good for more than a hand on deck to pull at the sails and bail out the bilge.

He could smell the sullen river water now, and threaded through it, the sulphur stench of the nearby lake of piche. He hadn't realised it afore this, but his nose had missed that pungent assault.

The ship leapt forwards on a swelling wave. Androu closed his eyes, the better to take in the scents of home. He smiled. He was coming back to the land that had exiled him. He was going to bring his homeland to its knees and make it beg; see if he wouldn't.

A bang came from the top of the hill. The sailors flinched and ran to man the cannon, even as the captain was ordering them to. What, was the game up already? If Chynchin captured their lead ship with their regent in it, the rest of the fleet would never gain the advantage.

A liquid flash of silver on top of the hill caught Androu's eye. The reservoir. What was happening up there? Androu practically snatched the spyglass from the captain's hand. He could see nothing wrong. He trained the spyglass on Carenage Town at the foot of the hill. Wet streets, and all that running about. He muttered to himself, "Is what a-gwan?"

He shrugged and handed the spyglass back to the captain. They would soon be docked. Then they'd see what was what.

Veycosi could hear the guards yelling for him as they gave chase. They were coming up fast. Panicked, he looked around. He was in Surgeon's Row. It backed onto the river. He'd be able to mongoose himself out that way.

The closest establishment had the symbol for "tooth" in its window. He yanked the door open and threw himself inside. He blundered through a waiting room. A few faces turned startled gazes'pon him; the rest were too busy nursing sore jaws. Some poor soul must have been having a tooth pulled right that minute; the screams hid the commotion of his blundering through the building, though that wouldn't help him if the guards had seen which way he'd gone.

The back doors of Surgeon's Row's establishments let out right onto the river. Easier for getting rid of offal. This toothdoctor's door was no different. In fact, it was so close to the bank that as Veycosi pushed through the door, he nearly fell into the water. There was scarcely enough room for him to stand on the narrow lip of riverbank. One more step, and he'd have taken a six-foot plunge into the river below. The water was low, and brown, churned up from the caimans massed in it, deadly twin tails waving lazily to and fro, hoping for scraps from the surgeons' doings. Usually they slept the days away and hunted in the cool of night. The surgeons must be busy today.

Veycosi flattened himself against the outside wall as his stones tried to climb back up inside his body. His sweaty hand closed tighter on his fish-gut-soaked scarf. It made a squelching sound. The meat smell issuing forth from it was potent, sweetish.

Every caiman floating in the water turned to fix its eyes upon him. They fanned out, their noseholes open wide, he the focus of their gaze.

No, not him.

The scarf. They could smell the fish that had tangled in it.

His hands shaking, he unwrapped the scarf from around his neck. The scent came on stronger, making him retch. The caimans grew more eager. They began to urge forwards. Could they climb a six-foot sheer drop? With those powerful claws, he didn't doubt it. They had no care for their fellows. They could easily clamber upon each other until some of them were able to reach the riverbank.

Someone from inside the toothdoctor's was yelling for the guards.

Veycosi cried out and thrust the scarf from him, towards the river. The caimans raised their heads en masse, the farthest ones out attempting to get over the others to get closer to the scarf as it arced out over the water and went flapping down to be snapped up by the nearest caiman. That beast was immediately swamped by the others. Then it was all snapping jaws and caiman blood and writhing and tearing.

He could hear the guards entering the toothdoctor's place. They clattered out the back door, yelping and warning each other as they were faced with the toothy frenzy not far below them. While they were distracted, Veycosi swallowed his gorge and edged along the wall until he found himself in the side yard of the building. He ran out onto the street and doubled back the way he'd come. A few more twists and turns of streets, and he was in the market, sweaty and gasping for air. He looked back. The guards weren't following. He'd lost them. Perhaps. They would know these streets as well as he, if not better. But it would be easier to lose himself here.

He was tired, and too disoriented to mark exactly where he was. He took what felt like a score of turns and got even more turned around. He ducked behind a dried-meat tent to catch his bearings.

The market, being a put-up-and-take-down affair, didn't have much running water, only a few standpipes. The flooding was less here. Unaware of the comess Veycosi had caused in Carenage Town, the market continued about its daily business of trading in tokens of merit. Free agents were standing or sitting or pacing up and down outside each stall, calling out the wares of the people whose offerings they were endorsing. Like that man over there, whose thin nose, pale eyes, and flowing yellow hair marked him as Deserter-kind. He wore the boiled leather vest of a pitch worker, with the characteristic smears of tar on the left side. He called out to passersby: "Look, Mam; look over here! This siani have nice otaheites, fresh as any strumpet, sweet as the milk from Mama-ji's nipples. And the juice from them, Mama! Lawdamassy! Come, Papi, come get you some, nuh? I wouldn't lie to you! Not to someone so fine. The first taste I ever get of this siani's otaheite apples, I convert to her skills one time. Had to come here to the market to confess it. Confess how I never like no otaheites before this. Come, picken; come try one, nuh? She grow them herself on her own plot. Raise up every sapling with a kiss come sunup and a caress come sundown. She even self wake up fore-day morning to come out in the fresh dark air to sing blessings to them. Take her seven years to raise the trees-them, till them was standing tall and straight, pointing to the sky. Yes, picken; take some home. Here, don't fill your robe; take a string bag. Made by that gentleman over there. I know his wares, too. Soft, strong string with knots that hold true. Tender enough to carry five egg without breaking a one. Strong enough to carry a picken-baby in a shoulder sling. Yes, picken; take. But only what you need, mind!"

The siani's otaheite apples, piled in neat pyramids of pear-shaped fruit on her table, did look tasty; ruby-red, fat, and healthy. The trade book beside her was thick as a plank with her week's endorsements. Veycosi was parched from all the running. To bite into one of the otaheites, expose the tender white flesh, feel the sweet juice running down his throat... He started towards the fruit stand to join the people helping themselves, tasting, then reaching for her trade book to sign their approval.

All on a sudden, hunger and thirst washed over Veycosi. The noise of the market crashed in his ears:

"Goodman, is who make these alpagats? A-you? But how you going to come to the market flogging your own wares? Where your agent? Where your endorsements? Who going trust your goods if no one will speak for you?"

"Fish, fish, fresh fish! I'm speaking out today for the Siani Kolumbai, the wise Siani Kolumbai, the skillful Siani Kolumbai, the fisherwoman Kolumbai. I am a mathematician of the Distinguished Colloquium of Fellows. My family's youngest picken-girl had sickened with the flux. Our wife was in despair. My co-husband fed the child fish tea made from Siani Kolumbai's fresh snapper, and she was well again by the next day. And the taste of that restorative snapper brew, my gentle friends! The richness, the umami! These were fish that had lived happy. Fish that leapt eager into Siani Kolumbai's nets with tender purpose, so their souls would fly straight to Mama-ji's loving arms. Fish, fresh fish!"

The racket had Veycosi bassourdie. He turned and turned in circles, unable to choose a way forwards. He froze as three guards strode briskly into the area. They looked around, scrutinizing everyone.

Something tugged at his hip. He whirled. A round, mischievous face was peeking from behind the snapper stall. Kaïra. Thandiwe's girl child, and his stepdaughter-to-be. "Picken!" Veycosi hissed. "Why you mixing yourself up into my troubles? Get away from here!"

Instead, Kaïra put finger to lips for silence and waved for Veycosi to follow her quietly. The guards hadn't noticed them yet. So he went where Kaïra was leading. It was the quickest way to get the girl away from this mess.

Veycosi thought he knew the market inside out. Hadn't he spent so many days of his youth running around inside here with his bannas? But Kaïra took him by routes he had never spied in all his born days. They zigzagged through a storage tent piled high with sacks of cornmeal. A young man stacking the sacks greeted Kaïra with a whispering of her name. Grinning, the lad let them out through a tent flap hidden behind one of the piles. Crouched low, they crab-walked into a small paddock filled with indifferent sheep. A woman with biceps like hams winked at Kaïra, then pretended not to see the two of them as she threw a fleece over each of their shoulders and let the sheep out to run free. Veycosi and Kaïra, scrambling on all fours, ran with the flock until they came to a narrow back alley where a circle of pickens egged on two of their number who were deep in a marbles tournament. To the cheers of the crowded pickens they threw off the fleeces and their oily stench; a younggirl handed Veycosi a roast chicken leg as they passed through that place. He ate it so fast he scarcely chewed. The spicy flesh was ecstasy. Thence they slid beneath the belly of a camel drawing a cart stacked high with corn. At one point, Kaïra pulled him to the ground beside the feet of a marketeer just as the guards were tromping that way. The marketeer winked down at the two of them, picked up the hems of the three layered kirtles ee was wearing--calico beige, brick brown, and dirt brown--and threw the fabric over both their backs. Over the beat of Veycosi's heart, he heard the retreating steps of the guards. When they crawled out from under ir kirtles, the marketeer gave them each a sugar candy and clapped Veycosi on the back. "Your young mistress looks after you well," ee said to Veycosi. Veycosi didn't bother to explain that he was the one looking after Kaïra by keeping her safe.

By this roundabout way, Kaïra brought them near the fisheries, which Thandiwe managed. A cart rattled by, piled high with delicately curlicued bamboo cages, each one with a large batti mamzelle perched on a twig inside, its four rainbow-prism wings thrumming, a live jewel.

The guards were nowhere to be seen. "Cosi!" exclaimed Kaïra finally, rushing to embrace Veycosi, nearly toppling him in her enthusiasm.

Laughing, Veycosi recovered his balance and returned the embrace. "Ai, picken, I swear you could tire a body out just by being joyous to see them." Kaïra's bird-boned body stiffened. The jest had hit too close to home. People were always telling Kaïra to slow down, take time, stop being so much.

Veycosi took the child by the shoulders and leaned down closer to look into the unsure young face. "Never you mind. I'm only making mock. The truth is, you just saved me from a little piece of bother. That was well done. Thank you."

Kaïra's expression brightened at the praise. She could never stay down-at-mouth for long. "The guards won't find you now, Cosi. Is what you do this time?" Kaïra grinned at him, doubtless expecting wondrous tales of mischief.

"I tell you later. Where Thandy-dey?" Veycosi draped a companionable arm across Kaïra's shoulders, and the two of them continued walking.

People in the market looked twice when they spotted Kaïra. Some of them pointed and whispered to one another. She ignored it. She was used to it. She jigged with glee as she accompanied Veycosi. "You hear the news?" she piped up, already moving to a new subject. "A ship! A whole ship full of Deserters!"

"Don't call them that," Veycosi told her. "Is not mannerly."

Kaïra grinned. "You call them that. When none of them around to hear you."

"Just because I do it doesn't make it well."

Kaïra pouted. "They tried to blow up the reservoir!" she said.

They? "They who? And who said so?"

"Nobody. Everybody. Mousa tell me he hear Saviat's mother's uncle talking with a guard who tell him so. One set of pink people come out of the big ship, and the portmaster call the guards to escort them! They have to talk to Cacique Macu!" No one knew he was the one responsible, then. Maybe there was a way out of this brangle after all. Veycosi felt a smile return to his lips. By the time the truth came out, he would be far gone, sailing the ocean.

They resumed their walk through the market. Veycosi noticed Kaïra rubbing her lower belly and grimacing. "Bellyache?"

She nodded. "I think I ate too much fufu at dinner last night." Then she asked, "Cosi, what would happen if you set lamp oil on fire and toss it into water?"

Veycosi chuckled. "Mamapiche Festival coming, nah true?"

"Yes, and me and--" She stopped. "But I mustn't tell you."

"Best not. You know the Blackheart Man will come for tattletale pickens," he teased.

Kaïra rolled her eyes. "I not a picken anymore," she said.

Kaïra and her young bannas were probably planning a Mamapiche float. They wouldn't thank her if she let their secrets slip to an adult. Even if Kaïra was about to bypass them all in status come Mamapiche.

"Kaïra! Over here!" A hearty old man was hailing Kaïra from a small open-air table surrounded by stone benches. He was playing Trade Winds with his bannas. They'd stopped in the middle of their game and were looking at Kaïra, their visages open and expectant as though someone were about to tell them a joke.

Kaïra frowned and stayed where she was. The man called out, "You japing in the market today? Some pre-Mamapiche jests for us?"

Kaïra pressed her lips together, shook her head, and stared at her feet. Veycosi nudged her. "Talk to the man, picken. You know you planning something."

Kaïra stuck out her bottom lip. She whispered, "For the festival, not for today." She moved away from Veycosi's nudging elbow.

Veycosi sighed. She was lively enough when running around with her bannas, but the minute anyone tried to treat her as the next Mamacona, she withdrew into herself, became shy and sullen.

Looked like she wasn't going to reply to the man. Up to Veycosi to smooth this over. Affably as he might, he called out, "Time enough for chicaneries after she become the twin goddess, nah true? Let the picken enjoy her remaining time as a picken."

The men shrugged and returned to their game. Kaïra threw Veycosi a grateful glance as they moved on. He swallowed his irritation at her reticence.

As though to underscore the problem, they'd only gone a few more steps when someone touched the shoulder of Kaïra's boubou. "Young mistress?" The woman withdrew her hand, clutched it to her bosom as though afraid she'd caused offense.

Kaïra turned to her. "Yes, siani?"

"You're Kaïra, nah true?"

Kaïra's face went carefully still. She nodded.

"Oh," the woman said, a small note of wonder in her voice. She pursed her lips before she dared speak again. "Me just want to know, young mistress; you could give me one blessing, please? My husband taking a trip today over to Cumbia Island, and I always so frightened when he on the water. Men don't belong on the sea, young mistress. Suppose the boat capsize? He can't swim for nothing. Please, if you could ask Mamapiche to speak to her sister, implore Mamagua to take care of him..." She trailed off.

Kaïra looked embarrassed and a mickle irritated. "Siani, she don't listen to me more than you," she said.

"Oh..."

"And when last you know a Chynchin sailoress to capsize a boat?"

The woman's face became even more drawn. "So sorry, young mistress. I didn't mean to disturb you."

Stern-faced, Kaïra stared at the woman as she fidgeted in shame. Then her visage softened. She instructed the woman, "Get three white eggs and throw them into the water for Her. For Mamagua. Tell Her your desire."

Paying no mind to the woman's shy thanks, Kaïra threaded her arm through the crook of Veycosi's elbow. "Come. Mama working at the fishery today." She led Veycosi away.

"That's more like it," Veycosi told her approvingly. "You acted like the official representative of the goddess sisters there. You were firm, but kind."

Kaïra cast him a sidewise glance, but said nothing, merely rubbed her sore belly. It would be all right. After Veycosi returned from his trip overseas, he would be wed to Kaïra's mother. And Kaïra would have officially become the human representative of Mamacona, embodied as Mamapiche. Her duties would become more important then, and Veycosi would be there to provide fatherly guidance.

When Thandy had found herself pregnant some twelve years before, she had been young, scarcely begun her courses. Her belly was swelling with life, but she swore there had been no baby father. She was having a twinning child, she felt sure; an exact copy of herself. That meant the bokors must needs become involved.

The second Kaïra was born, they whisked the baby away, before even Thandiwe could clap eyes properly on her. Hours went by as Thandiwe and her mother fretted about the new member of their family. Was she sickly? Was she a twinning child, or not?

Eventually, the bokors returned Kaïra to her mother's arms. As Thandiwe struggled to get the knack of giving suckle to Kaïra, one of the bokors pointed out the baby's features. She had the same moles as her mother, in the exact same places. The whorls on her fingertips were the exact same pattern as Thandiwe's. She was identical to Thandy in every way. The bokors proclaimed that Kaïra was indeed that rare thing, a twinning child. As such, she would become the next representative of the twin Mamacona goddesses. Since she'd been born during Mamapiche season, she would be dedicated to Mamapiche--the twin deity's dark half--at festival time of her twelfth birthday. She would be expected to be forever playing tricks, as the tar deity Mamapiche did. Veycosi wasn't the only one to think it would have been better if Kaïra had been born in Mamagua season. The goddess Mamagua was associated with the blue of the life-giving waters and the sky. Yes, she could be terrible when she was angry. But mostly she was loving and friendly towards the nation of Chynchin, flowing tenderly around her and keeping her refreshed with plenty. That would have suited Kaïra's lively but gentle nature better. Better yet, of course, if Thandiwe and her mother hadn't indulged themselves in this fancy of goddesses and a twinning child. Then Kaïra would be growing up without this burden on her.

Still, Veycosi was sure the child would adapt. She had a swift mind, like his.

They had reached the fish cultivation ponds in the market. Kaïra pointed with her chin; "Koo Mama Thandy there."

Thandiwe was waist-deep in the water of the outermost pond, conferring with another woman over the steel workings that stirred the pond water. Both women had stripped down to breechclouts. Their outer clothes were piled on the side. As ever, Veycosi's blood softened and flowed warm at the sight of his betrothed. Gombey said he should be patient, that Thandiwe would let him and Gombey both know when she was ready to take them as husbands. In the meantime, he said, life was brief. Take all the joy this life could give. Veycosi had taken his banna's counsel to heart; had since they were youngboys. Life was sweet, and held many pleasures. But he was impatient to begin his married life.

He slipped his arm out from the crook of Kaïra's. "Picken, I don't know what allyou planning for your float, but don't mix hot oil with water. Hot oil flying into your face is no joke."

Kaïra nodded, her face fallen in disappointment. The Mamapiche Festival was the last time for a long time that she would be able to run free with her bannas. Once she became Mamapiche, her time wouldn't be hers until the next twinning child to be born had turned twelve and could take her place. Kaïra would have to appear at ceremonies to bless this and that, dressed all in Mamapiche black, wearing a grinning wire-and-paper caiman head over her own and sporting a cured caiman tail tied secured with leather straps around her waist. The costume looked ridiculous. It was meant to. Wherever she went, costume or no, she would be expected as the earthly incarnation of the trickster Mamapiche to make sport constantly; pinching the bums of old sianis, thieving washing off people's lines, and the like.

Thandy saw the two of them and smiled. She took the short set of stone stairs out of the water, the other woman following behind her. "The fish were too crowded, is all," Thandy told her worker. "Just take out all the new-hatched fingerlings and put them in the other pool."

"Yes, siani."

Both women picked up their robes and drew them on. Kaïra ran to fetch her mama's straw satchel. She handed it to Thandiwe as her head emerged from her robe.

"Thank you, little sister," Thandy said, affectionately stroking her child's head.

Kaïra beamed. "My pleasure, big sister," she replied.

True they looked as alike as marassas, but Veycosi really wished she wouldn't overindulge Kaïra in this fantasy of being her twinning child. It was too late for that, though. The whole country had taken up the tale since Kaïra's birth. And it was young Kaïra who was bearing the burden of Thandiwe's story-making. Kaïra's twelfth birthday would be this year. The season was changing. Over the past few months, Mamagua's rains had trickled away into the annual false drought, when no rain fell for many weeks. But Mamagua had one last gift left for her children before she ceded to her sister, Mamapiche, the Black Lady; soon there would be a thunderous monsoon. The sky would open up and drench the land for a couple of days. The Iguaca River would run high and leap its banks. Then the Feast of Eggs would happen. Then, a feverish month of final preparations later, would be the festival to welcome Mamapiche. Because after that there would be no more rain for half the year, until Mamapiche tired of her reign and once more gave sway to her watery sister. At the Mamapiche Festival, Kaïra was going to be given to Mamapiche. Or, as some would have it, become Mamapiche. She would ritually descend into the Mother Lake, the always-molten piche at the centre of the Upper Piche Lake. Once she ascended thence, she would in some wise be considered to be the full aspect of Mamacona: Mamapiche as well as that of Mamagua. As far as the general populace was concerned, Kaïra was the closest thing to a living god. If she took a sea bath off the shores of Carenage Town in the morning, the least guard in Maroon village on the farthest side of the island would be singing about it by evening. More disturbing to Veycosi, Thandy had convinced herself that her story was true, that her child had sprung from her without a man planting her with seed. She had chosen this life for her child before Kaïra could have any say in the doing of it.

What would happen to her when she made the same descent into the Mother Lake? Common sense told Veycosi that Kaïra would reap nothing more dangerous than a slight burn or two. She'd been instructed that she would descend encased in a watertight stone coffin; inside it, she would be fully wrapped in wet coir. And the second the coffin had sunk completely below the piche, a bokor would give the signal to winch it back out again. Kaïra should be safe. But Chynchin had a way to be uncanny. Concern for his daughter-to-be had been scraping at the back of Veycosi's brain more and more as the time drew closer. Thandy had told him that Kaïra had begun waking some nights, screaming to be let out. She refused to tell her mother what her nightmares were, but Thandy supposed she was afraid of the box in which she'd be lowered into the hot piche of the Mother Lake during her transformation ceremony.

Thandy took a handful of crabstones out of her satchel and slipped the satchel inside her sleeve. She popped the chalky stones into her mouth and crunched down on them. How the blast she managed to eat chalk like it was sweetmeat, he would never understand. "Cosi," she said warmly. "My dear chirping cricket, always raising a ruckus."

"Sweetling, you know I don't love that name." As a picken, Veycosi had been given the nickname because he asked so many questions so unrelentingly.

"I'll try to remember." She came and grasped his hands with both of hers. As she did, she stepped foot in a puddle of reservoir mud. Her smile changed to a frown. "Cosi, be honest; you have anything to do with events this morning?"

He put on a nonchalant face. "You mean, a ship from Ymisen arriving and blowing up the reservoir? You not glad to have your water running again? You were telling me you were afraid the tilapia fish would sicken in the breeding ponds."

Her eyes narrowed farther. "How the ship arrive and blow up the reservoir same time?"

He shrugged. "Is so people saying. Nah true, Kaïra?"

"A-true," the picken piped up.

"Kaïra," said Thandy, "go and fetch me a cooling drink, please? Mobby." When she was gone, Thandy put her hands on her hips and regarded Veycosi skeptically. "Cricket, I know you had something to do with the reservoir."

The nickname again. Veycosi shrugged, avoiding her gaze. She tutted. "How you can be own-way so all the time? What kind of example you setting for your future daughter?"

"I know, I know." He glanced over at Kaïra, whose eyes were only for the trays of fresh, sweet halwah balls being laid out at a stall not far off. "But maybe I'm just showing Kaïra how to think for herself."

"She too young for that." Crunch, crunch on the crabstones. Made Veycosi's own tongue dry just watching her.

"Too young?" Veycosi reached out to brush a white smear of chalk from her upper lip. She saw where his hand was tending, caught it, and drew it to her face. She smiled at him. They stood an instant or two like that, her cheek warm against his palm. Veycosi said, "She's about to become Mamapiche. She will cease being a youth very soon now. She will have to have a mind of her own, or custom and ceremony will wear her spirits down."

Gently, she pushed his hand away. Her face had gone sombre. "We should act proper in public," she said. "Kaïra can see us."

Said holy get was at the halwah stall. She looked to be taking one of each kind. "She already have her own desires, Thandy. Just like you as a picken. Now, if I'm to believe you and Kaïra, she and Mamagua palaver all the time?"

She gave a soft, warm smile at that. "Yes."

Veycosi managed not to roll his eyes. After all, it was just a game that Thandy and Kaïra amused each other with. Didn't youngboy him used to tell tales about being able to fly with the cullybrees? Let the picken's imagination roam free as long as it could. "So you see, then," Veycosi replied, "I can't have any kind of bad influence on Kaïra. If she only make one wayward step, I bet you Mamagua would come tromping right up out of the water and slap some sense broadside her face with her tails."

Thandy giggled. "You have no reverence, you know that?"

"And ain't is that why you love me?"

This banter; he had missed it. It was the most warmth Thandiwe had shown him in months.

She lowered her eyes to the ground. "I think I going to miss you while you're away, Cosi."

"You think?"

But Thandy wasn't listening to him. She was watching Kaïra, who was absent-mindedly rubbing her stomach. Thandy smiled. "She going to get her courses soon. Koo how her belly panging her."

Veycosi startled. He hadn't considered that. "She told me she eat too much last night."

Thandy shook her head. "I don't think is that. She's the right age for her blood to start."

In another minute, Kaïra was back from the halwah stall. She handed her mother a calabash of mobby. For herself, Kaïra had gotten four big balls of halwah and a small calabash of watered hill beer. "The Ymisen people are whiter even than Deserters!" she burst out. She took a swig of beer, bit off some of the halwah, and chewed. Her face was alive with fascination. "Ma, they use money!"

Her mother smiled at her adoringly. "You have a jest ready to play while you're here in the market, picken? The last one you played was a sennight ago."

Kaïra looked crestfallen. "No one laughed at that one."

Thandy sighed. "You pulled a face at a babe in arms. There's no art in that. No spectacle."

Veycosi said, "Next time, you dress up as a baby. Get into a pram and have one of your bannas push you around and pretend to be nursing you."

Thandiwe chuckled. "Yes, that would work."

Kaïra merely looked stubborn. Veycosi sighed. The child had a ready-made audience, people prepared to be entertained by her, and she was wasting it.

Five Ymisen sailormen came strolling into the fishery. People working there paused to stare at them. Ymisen stared back. A couple of the Ymisen men went over to one of the ponds, where two men and a woman, stripped to breechclouts, worked knee-deep in the water, using wood-framed nets to dredge the bottom for any refuse that had fallen in. "What's in there?" asked one of the sailors, pointing at the water. His speech sounded warped to Veycosi's ear. It was like Chynchin's, but not. One fellow only stared hungrily at the woman in the water.

"It's fish," she replied with a shrug, and went back to work.

The silent sailor nudged his banna and indicated the woman with his chin. Gesturing with his hands, he mimed her tetas and full hips. The others laughed and pulled him back to join them. "Come away," said one of them. "You'd think they would magic the fish fresh from the sea instead of enclosing them like this. Stinks in here."

It didn't. But with that insult they left, though even as he walked, the man still leered over his shoulder at the worker. She scowled and kept her eyes on the water. One of his bannas asked the others, "What's that big, ugly pack animal they have everywhere here? The ones that smell like damp socks?"

Thandy shook her head. "Mannerless lot. Ymisen sailors walking round the market," she said, "gawking everywhere like monkey. Especially at the women. Principe's guild of companions going to have plenty custom today."

"They take us for the fairy folk!" said Kaïra.

Veycosi burst out laughing. "You mean, they're just as craven as their Mirmeki cousins?"

In every country that Ymisen captured, it enslaved people. Some of these were put forcibly into service as frontline foot soldiers; always the first to die in battle. They were human shields. Chynchin's Mirmeki were descended from these; the Mirmeki who had deserted the Ymisen army the day that three witches had supposedly drowned an army of Mirmeki in piche. Chynchin's Mirmeki were forever putting bowls of milk and beer out front their doors at night to woo favour from the fey. Your cow only was giving turned milk? They would tell you a hob was doing it. One of them turned up late for work? It was because a jack mulateer had merry-led him through the bush and made him lose his way, and he didn't have the slightest idea how he'd ended up in the rum shop instead. "Ymisen people believe in the fey, too? You're making sport, picken!"

"No, is true!"

Thandy nodded. "True thing she's talking. Principe heard one of them tell another one not to eat any of our food, lest he return home again to find a centaine of years passed, and all his fellows dead."

Veycosi shook his head. "What a thing."

"I want a kilt like those men from the ship were wearing," said Kaïra. "Only in purple. With silver trim."

"Red and gold would suit you better," Veycosi told her. "Like the guard colours."

Kaïra's eyes lit up. "Yes, like that! Ma, I could get a kilt like that?"

Thandy sighed and shook her head. "Kilt is man clothes. Too besides, the bokors will give you a new wardrobe, all in Mamapiche black. You will like that, nah true?"

The child nodded uncertainly. In a small voice, she said, "Yes, Mama."

Thandy hugged Kaïra to her bosom and said, "Cosi, what you want to go and encourage the girl for?"

"You know is only jest I making."

Time to pack. Veycosi made his goodbyes to Thandiwe and Kaïra. Still looking back at his betrothed, he turned in the direction of the southern exit from the market. So intent he was on Thandiwe, he didn't notice the three guards till they had him practically surrounded. He made to flee, but they pulled in tighter around him. He was penned in. "Mestre," said one of them, a stout, corn-coloured youth with broad shoulders, "you will come with us, please."

Veycosi nodded at the other two. "Morning, Taibo, Philomena." They nodded warily. They knew him well, from similar circumstances. The fire in the Colloquium's kitchen. The experiment with the half-tonne of soursop seeds. The failed steam-drawn cart. He couldn't help it. If one of the Colloquium's books gave him an idea, he had to try it. "On what charge you come to take me today?"

Broad Shoulders replied, "Nothing specific at the moment, mestre. Council just have some questions for you."

Thandiwe and Kaïra had scurried over to them. "Oh, Cosi," said Thandy, "is what mischief you gone and done now?"

He winked at her and Kaïra, all the while protesting that he was--nearly--a Fellow of the Colloquium, and he had an important appointment to keep down at the docks tomorrow morning on the ship to Ifanmwe. "And I didn't have nothing to do with the explosion at the reservoir. I was just boasting when I said that."

"Never said aught about the reservoir, maas'." Ignoring his protestations of innocence, they marched him away for questioning, and Veycosi well knew it was with regards to the sudden, intemperate flooding of the south side of the town. He waved at his bride- and daughter-to-be as he went. He called out, "Tell Gombey I will bring him some wool from Ifanmwe! I will see oonuh in three months' time!" People were staring as the guards took him away. Over Philomena's shoulder, he stuck his tongue out at a gaping picken-girl leading a black-and-grey guinea fowl by a string knotted around its neck.

Philomena grasped his shoulder. Gently for her, but still, her fingers felt as though they could leave dents. "Mestre, please behave."

He gave her his best smile. "Very well, my fulsome Philomena. For sake of your pretty brown eyes, I will behave."

She didn't reply, simply shifted her hand until it was at his neck-back and pressed a little, urging him onwards.

Datiao's arm punched through into the air. He knew it only because the arm met no more resistance. He fought the other arm up as well, then his head. For the first time since the gods only knew how long, he felt the outside world on what was left of his skin again. He'd been crawling upwards through the Mother Piche, the tarry semi-solid at the core of the piche lake, clutching in one hand the prize that kept reviving him. He'd died, smothered and furious at his own folly, three more times since he'd managed to clutch the thing some while ago.

Now he lay with his head and arms exposed to the sweet night air and the rest of him still mired in the sticky Mother Piche. It was dark, and quiet. Was the skirmish over, then? Had the Ymisen soldiers taken the day, or had his compong won out? Datiao sucked in a breath. Air, so, so sweet. He spluttered as he spat black liquified piche out his mouth and nose. The agitation of his body made him sink a little way into the piche again. His mouth dipped below its surface. With a pang of terror, he realised he must fight his whole self free at once, else drown once more amongst the dead Mirmeki soldiers.

He pushed and swam and kicked, and managed to squirm through the sticky, over-warm Mother Piche to a place at its edges where the stuff was hardened. All around him, drowned soldiers and their steeds were doing the same, raised back to life by the pull of the thing in his hand. Because of being a spy for his village, he'd still been among the Ymisen soldiers when they went to their deaths. He'd as lief have died amongst his own. But here he was, with his compong's enemies.

He rolled out onto the hard piche, tried to clamber to his feet, but his broken leg gave way like rotten kindling, and down he went. He hit the ground with a dull, wet splat. He cursed, his voice hoarse from lack of practise.

Some of the Ymisen Mirmeki had injuries worse than his. A sticky horse crawled forwards on the stumps of forelegs, its rump in the air. Its screaming was awful.

Datiao rolled over onto his side to try again. He was moving more slowly, having to strain to bend and unbend his arms. He swore in fury as he realised what was happening. The very air he'd been trying so hard to reach was hardening the piche that imbued his body. He should be chanting the spell! He tried to open his lips to speak, but the piche had already solidified over his mouth.

He and the others lay there helplessly the rest of the night, slowly hardening into coal-like lumps.

Copyright © 2024 by Nalo Hopkinson

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