out across the archipelago.
Inside the volcano, the crater was filled with chill lake water that sank to depths known only to the gods—for on those placid waters was the Floating City, the home of the Ixonian pantheon.
At various points along the eastern slope, tunnels had been carved into the volcano. Through a series of baffles and floodgates, the crater’s water flowed out and down the volcano’s slope, which had been cut into terraces for the cultivation of taro and rice.
Amid these paddy fields, enclosed by twenty-foot-high walls, was bright Chandralu. The city, like the mountainside, was cut into terraces; sixteen terraces, to be precise, each nearly twenty feet tall and eighty deep. Lying as they did between two tall ridges, most of the terraces ran a convex course and so appeared like the rows of a giant amphitheater.
Nearly all of the architecture was that of the Cloud Culture: cylindrical pavilions surrounded by close-packed, two-story rectangular houses with slanted roofs and verdigris copper gutters. Nearly every wall was whitewashed. At noon the city became almost painfully bright.
As Holokai brought them into the harbor, Leandra could make out the city’s detail. Not all the whitewashed houses were the same white: Some were drab, some dirty, some faintly hued with tan or brown, a few so white they seemed solar. In the finer districts the buildings sported doors, shutters, railings painted in competitively vivid color: violet, crimson, yellow. On the higher and wealthier terraces, beautiful trees—palm, jacaranda, plumeria, banyan—lined the streets, and the shady green of gardens interrupted the white buildings.
The only architectural exceptions were the three limestone temple-mountains, built in the intricate Lotus style, standing dark and cool over the rest of the blazing city.
After they docked, Holokai reported to the port authorities while Leandra talked with Dhrun. The divinity complex had stowed his swords and stood on the deck wearing only a short lungi. Bare-chested, he cut a conspicuous picture. Several dockworkers stared at the young god of wrestling. Dhrun smiled at them, enjoying the attention and anticipating their future prayers at the next wrestling tournament.
“You’re such a peacock,” Leandra casually accused.
“The male or the female of the species? They’re very different.”
“Don’t be difficult. Whenever someone refers to peacocks they’re talking about the males with their fancy plumage.” She gestured to his bare chest.
He smiled. “Maybe they shouldn’t.”
“You’re not going to carry a sword in the city?”
He gave her a four-shouldered shrug. “Everyone knows I’m deadlier with my bare hands. It’s only outside the city when the weapons stop fools from attacking me.”
“There are fools in the city too, you know.”
Just then Holokai returned and began to pay the crew.
Leandra had noticed with relief that there was no sign of her mother’s ship in the harbor. A few minutes later, flanked by Holokai and Dhrun, she left the docks to find a way through the bustling Bay Market Plaza. It was a chaotic, beautiful market day. All around her fishmongers hawked every type of food from the ocean: seaweed, tuna, dolphinfish, amberjack, grouper, snapper—all neatly decapitated, gutted, and arranged in circular displays. Octopus tentacles were hung to dry in the sun like laundry on a clothesline.
Atop some of the stalls and nearby roofs peered troops of Chandralu’s infamous macaque monkeys, who could be as merciless as the city’s thugs. The long-tailed, wide-faced, furry little brutes had learned every conceivable ploy to steal food. The larger troops would execute brutal smash-and-grab-style raids on food stalls left guarded by children or the elderly. Or a monkey might play a Wounded Bird game or a mother might offer her adorable babies to be petted by a softhearted human while other members of the troop quick-fingered any morsel left inadequately guarded.
On the Bay Market’s western edge stood a tiny open-air temple, no more than twenty feet in diameter. Inside, a four-man gamelan ensemble struck small hammers upon their many brass instruments in a style of gamelan unique to Chandralu. Each musician played through a cycle upon his instruments, and the different musical cycles went into and fell out of sync with the other. It produced a bright, clanging, circular music, at times almost cacophonous.
As a child, Leandra had thought gamelan music exotic, harsh. Now it was a small pleasure, an example of Lotus Culture, a reminder that she was home. A priest, dressed in multicolored robes, was accompanying the gamelan music in song that exhorted the crowd to pray to the Trimuril and the other official deities of the Ixonian pantheon.
Past the pavilion stood the bottom of the Jacaranda Steps, which climbed the mountainside to the Water Temple at the city’s upper limit.
The Jacaranda Steps themselves were built of gray stone, broad and long enough to allow for the tread of elephants, which were used to carry goods and materials across the city. Starting about a third of the way to the city’s top, the Jacaranda Steps were lined with shops and stalls that grew more opulent as the steps rose higher until they were replaced by the largest and most beautiful family compounds. The jacaranda trees that gave the stairway its name flanked the steps every ten feet. At this time of year their branches were in full purple bloom.
The Jacaranda Steps would have been a charming scene except for the lower terraces. Here they were lined by the poor—some selling brass baubles spread out on blankets, others rattling beggar’s bowls or calling out pleading songs. Here was the vast and horrible variety of suffering. Here were men who had lost an arm or a leg. Here were starving mothers with hollow eyes. They cradled their infants, who wailed or lay slack as flies buzzed around their faces.
Leandra, like all denizens of the Chandralu, had learned to look at such commonplace misery without reaction. It was only when she thought of the fact that there were no spellwrights among the miserable that Leandra could feel anything. Then the emotion that came was anger. Throughout history, spellwrights were exempt from destitution. The longer she thought about it, the hotter Leandra’s anger burned.
Whether a child would become a spellwright or not was a chance event; however, the chances were improved by education. In the empire, where Leandra’s aunt had invested in grammar schools and printing presses, a larger number of children were become spellwrights and more of them from the poorer classes. That was an admirable improvement, certainly, but it still didn’t change the fact those born magically illiterate were vulnerable.
It was the capriciousness of the universe that angered Leandra. That some were born able to become spellwrights, others born poor, and others—like her—born to suffer lifelong disease. The unfairness of it all boiled in her like childish rage.
As she eyed the grubby crowd, Leandra tried to push down her anger and focus. Getting past the lower steps could be difficult. Among the poor would be some of the miserable deities: gods and goddesses who had been abandoned by their devotees or who had suffered injury or deprivation at the hands of other deities or powerful humans. Often these destitute divinities fused into large complexes to pool their meager strengths.
In fact, as Leandra picked her way through the crowds, she glimpsed the eight-armed, many-headed Baruvalman, sometimes called Baru. A sallow aura shone around him.
Leandra’s heart sank. Baru was a complex of so many pitiful divinities that his speech was often nonsensical and his actions—driven by so many different requisites—often led him into danger. But somehow, most likely through bribery, Baru had managed to place an ark stone in the Floating City and become an official member of the Ixonian pantheon and therefore was entitled to Leandra’s protection.
Of the several interactions Leandra had had with Baru, all had been unpleasant and one had been disastrous. Presently Baru was doing the only thing most miserable deities could do, beg for prayers.
“Walk fast,” Leandra said while glancing over her shoulder at Dhrun and Holokai.
Holokai eyed the ragged crowd and tightened his grip on his leimako. The shark’s teeth shone opalescent in the sunlight.