***
“It's perfectly hideous, don't you think?” Pird sang as he and Sye walked down the mostly empty street.
“You're not worth the trouble,” Sye said sourly.
“You wouldn’t know what to do without me,” Pird prodded playfully.
Sye rolled his eyes, “You still haven't told me why you went ahead and had your fun today instead of day after tomorrow. I can't protect your hobby if you're not careful.”
“I'm careful.”
“You're dodging the question.”
Pird shrugged, “To be honest, I really don't know. I just felt like going out here. Where it's quiet.”
“You've been around Eris too long,” said Sye.
“Of course I have!” Pird replied, exasperated, “You're off with your father, Zook's at the hospital again, and Magist is at the festival!”
“Why didn't Eris go?”
“Something about it being too loud. Then she started reading again, probably sleeping now too. So I'm out here, being pushed around by you.”
The two came to the top of one of the bridges spanning the canals and looked around. Sye leaned on the railing and said, almost to himself, “It's easier to see when it's quiet.”
“What is?” asked Pird, perplexed.
“Eretia,” Sye answered wistfully.
Eretia, the trade city of Adrala, was a forest of white. Buildings crowded together, each one more magnificent then the last. Pillars and archways stretched over the streets, lending to walkways and suspended canals that layered Eretia’s infrastructure. All was crafted from smooth white marble, the flurry of crowds usually providing the color with their flamboyant clothes. Water, an unlimited resource that Eretia needed no pumps for, was used in every decoration. Water spouted from fountains, ran down the sides of roofs and walls, cascaded on either side of doors, ran along miniature canals in the sidewalks, streaming simply everywhere.
After taking in the grand sight, Pird's eyes were drawn, as everyone's eyes inevitably were, to Saranoda.
Colossal, gargantuan, massive, giant, and mammoth were all words too small to describe the great tower Saranoda. The tower measured little more than two kilometers in diameter, and the tallest visible point was estimated to be twenty kilometers above the island. If one stood at the coast of the Lermur Sea, they would see a line on the horizon that rose up to fade beyond the visible atmosphere. Its metal had a dark blue sheen, but that was the only clue to its composition. At regular intervals, roughly a few kilometers in between, four massive triangular arms sprouted from its side and reached over the city, each time at a different angle but exactly equally apart.
Saranoda was the source of Eretia's water. Great slits were cut into the arms; open veins, and gaping caverns carved into its body. Pure, undiluted water rushed from these apertures all over the tower. The weight of tens of millions of liters falling from so high into the immense bowl at the tower's base created a rumble that could be heard several kilometers off the coast of their island. The sun's rays filtered down through its vast canopy, its leaves nothing more than white vapor. Pird was glad the wind was going east today; otherwise the castoff from the tower's falls would be causing a heavy rain in their northern district.
Expeditions to climb Saranoda had long been given up as impossible. The Eretians were born at its base and raised in its shadow. It struck Pird that he didn’t often truly see Saranoda, it was as part of Eretia as any stone in the city’s streets.
But it’s just Saranoda, Pird thought, Why do I keep staring at it today?
“Imagine living to the west or east,” Sye wondered out loud, “A chunk of every day removed by the sun disappearing behind the tower.”
“Be rather depressing,” Pird agreed, then added with a wry smile, “But at least it’d be easier to sneak around.”
Sye nodded absentmindedly, obviously not hearing.
A minute passed, nearly provoking Pird to give Sye enough of a shove to make his friend jump back from the railing, when Sye suddenly asked, “Do you ever wonder where Saranoda came from?”
Pird blinked in suprise, “What do you mean?”
Sye laughed, “I mean what was here before? Why is there a giant pillar of metal in the middle of the sea?”
“Why are pants called ‘pants’?” Pird asked, shrugging.
Sye frowned, “You’re not very helpful.”
“You’re asking things nobody does, what’d you want from me?” Pird replied, exasperated, “Hey, let's go back to Magist's. You're sleeping over again, right?”
“Yea,” Sye replied, giving up, “But I have to be by my father when he announces his success tonight.”
Pird snapped his fingers, “That's what I meant to ask you! All of Eretia's having a party, but the only thing they know is that your father is returning. What's the mysterious Mayor up to?”
“My father wanted to keep it secret for a while; he's had a lot of opposition.”
“You mean the giant bug thing?”
Sye winced, “Not you too, the bug has a name.”
“So we're really going to start trading with the big bug-I mean, Flaar?”
Sye nodded, “The sand forests the Flaarians tend are home to some very unique, very valuable kinds of spices. There’s speculation that there’s a lot of medicinal applications to be found there as well. My father had to meet with Flaar alone to negotiate. Flaar would have it no other way.”
Pird whistled, “No wonder he's only going to make one appearance, tough being Mayor.”
“Don't you know it,” Sye said, suddenly sounding distracted.
Pird had more to say, but he held his silence out of respect for his friend's difficulties. Being twenty, Sye had less than three years until he became a legal adult and his father would announce his successor. Then Sye would have to do more then being present and making the odd toast.
Probably will have to start acting serious too, Pird thought dismally.
It wasn't long before they came to Magist's house. It was large and ornate, bordering on being a small mansion. A pair of columns rose on either side of the door, encased in glass with running water between the clear surface and marble. The windows were tall and thin, looking over an entire fourth of an acre of grass. Inlaid in the white door was a large glass sphere. Pird knew it was useless to try and look in; the globe was somehow designed to be a one-way view.
To the side of the door was a pile of wooden boards and nails, the remains of freight crates common to Eretia.
“Wonder what we got,” Pird asked, kicking an errant board back into the pile.
“No idea,” Sye replied, reaching up to use the dragon-shaped knocker when a flustered looking Magist opened the door for them.
“Oh,” said Magist, looking surprised, “So you are back. Just in time. Good, I mean, well, yes, good.”
Magist was a short, slightly heavy man with balding white hair. His twinkling blue eyes flitted between Pird and Sye, his small but strong hands were held rigidly at his side, rubbing his thumbs over his fingers.
“Have either of you seen a roll of paper?” Magist asked urgently, ushering them in, “Leather knot with a red wax seal?”
“I saw a scroll on your desk,” said Sye, “Next to our essays on the War of Two Kings.”
Magist laughed, “On my desk, the only place it would be. Pird!”
Pird snapped to attention, blinking away a daydream about ducks swordfighting, “What’d I break?”
“Who do we now call the False King?”
Pop quiz, Pird thought anxiously, False King. Go away ducks! Thinking. Thinking. Thinking.
Yup. Not a clue.
“Rathmin Ter’kor,” Sye answered, “He convinced the city of Benji to cut trade to Mirith and invade D’Buul so-”
“As I expect to find in your essay,” Magist interrupted gently, “That is why the question was posed to whom has yet to write theirs.”
“You lost me
at ‘whom’,” Pird said.
“Pird.”
Pird glanced away, “I’m working on it.”
“I imagine you will be now,” Magist said firmly, but with a smile. The smile was short lived, replaced again by anxiety, “Oh my speech, on my desk. Be right back.”
Pird flopped down in the nearest seat. Magist called it a sitting room, but the house's dignity called it an atrium. A large elaborate fireplace was the dominating feature amongst the array of tall armchairs that evoked a peculiar image of being butlers at the ready. Pird suspected that was why Magist fussed over the chairs so much; he could not bring himself to hire someone to do something he could readily do with his own hands. Large paintings hung on the walls, water running over their glass frames. They depicted different views of different landmarks throughout the island. Magist took Eretia's decoration to heart as its head historian; every room breathed water and was tiled in white and bright marbled gray.
Magist came back down the stairs, scroll clutched in one hand, still looking flustered.
“What're you up to?” Sye asked.
“Your father wants me to give a grand speech about Eretia's place in the scheme of things. My specialty of course, we are the next Mirith, but there is still...”
“You lecture to a lot more people than just us sometimes,” Sye said, “Why are you so nervous?”
“Well, yes,” said Magist, “He actually wants me to say we are the next Mirith, that we'll soon have The Fourth City after our name. That, and he promised me a trip to the ruins of the Second City.”
“That sounds like fun,” Pird said, “You know, with all the rocks there. And snow. Snow and rocks.”
“Not everyone’s playpen is rooftops and races,” Magist said, “There are some very interesting rocks in all that snow, so I am doing my best to, well, try my best. Have you seen my hat?”
“You're wearing it,” Pird said with a straight face.
Magist took his white top hat off, “Why, so I am. Is Eris still here or has she discovered sleepwalking?”
“Haven’t seen her menacing the living outside,” Pird said with a shrug, then suddenly lit up, “Hey, what were the boxes for?”
“That would be a surprise, and so is what I have to say over dinner,” Magist said with a mischievous smile.
Pird stood up and stretched, “What's for eats, anyway?”
Magist's face fell, “Oh I really need to leave, I completely forgot, I am already so very late. Zook will be home from his shift at the hospital soon, ask him. You know he cooks better than I do.”