Sea & Sky

Chapter 2-1

Chapter 2

LANA HAD ALWAYS BEEN adamant that she would never become one of those vain girls who agonised for hours about what to wear in front of the mirror before going out, but she spent all day going through her wardrobe deciding what to pack for her trip to Ysherra with Viki.

Because, though she might not be concerned with what she looked like, she didn’t want to be dressed inadequately on the trip. Ysherra was hot, so she packed cool chemises, and wide skirts. Also some trousers, despite Dad’s belief that she shouldn’t be wearing any. She packed sandals, but didn’t want to wear them for the first part of the journey—the train ride to Watya—because sandals weren’t appropriate wear for a lady; so she put the sandals in her bag and would wear closed shoes on the train.

What books should she take? Her notebook, for one, but books were heavy. Would there be any libraries where she could use the books she needed? Should she take any instruments? What about her spyglass? It came off the stand, and the tube and stand separately fitted snugly in a neat little box. There was a place called Red Hill to the north of Ysherra where people came to observe the stars, where it was said that the night sky was lit up with them even if there was no moon. The moon had vanished to a pinprick and would not foul up any night viewing.

It would be a pity not to go up there if she had the opportunity.

But when she put everything she thought essential in her bag, she could barely lift it. That wasn’t going to be practical. So the books came out. The spyglass case was nice, but in hindsight quite heavy, and if she wrapped the tube in clothes and stuffed a sock in the lens opening it would be nicely protected.

There. That was a bit more manageable. She picked up the bag and carried it down the stairs. It was still very heavy, and she wondered if she would be required to carry it large distances. She hoped not.

Myra came out of the kitchen. “Oh, you’re ready? When are you leaving?”

“Viki will bring the truck here after midday.” The train would leave in the late afternoon and would arrive at Watya tomorrow morning. From there, it would be a two-day bus ride to Ysherra.

“I’ll pack you some nice goodies for the journey. Just leave your bags here, and I’ll put a nice parcel on top.”

Lana dreaded how much Myra would give her to bring. She had so much to carry already.

She went into the kitchen. It was warm in there, the cook was ladling steaming soup into plates, and her mother sat in her chair at the table.

She smiled at Lana when she sat down. “Your father will be here soon.”

“I thought he had to go to meetings?”

“He does, but he still made some time to be with us before you leave.”

Words were on Lana’s tongue about it being only a trip of a few weeks, and that she wasn’t even leaving the country. But she understood some of the worries about Aranians and a potential war, even if her father didn’t want to share those with her.

“Do we wait for him?” The soup smelled wonderful and she was hungry. She reached out for the bread that lay, still warm, on a cutting board on the table.

“That would be nice, don’t you think?”

Lana withdrew her hand from the bread. She tucked her hands between her knees, and then didn’t know what to say.

“You will have a nice trip,” her mother said after an awkward silence.

“Are you going to be all right while I’m gone?”

“Of course. Myra will just have to keep me company.”

A small stack of books and papers lay on the corner of the table. Lana knew that her mother was working on collecting names of people from the City of Glass who had died, for a monument to be put up in their name, but her mother rarely spoke about it. Now she nodded at the stack. “How are you getting on with the monument?”

Her mother gave a wan smile. “I have most of the names that I will ever be able to get. I only need to write to a couple of people now.”

“To get the monument built?”

“No, the Knight Council has already voted to do that.” She looked at the table. “I’m going to write to all your half-brothers and half-sisters who are still alive. I want them to know that I have never forgotten them and that I would have looked after them had that been possible.”

Lana raised a hand to her mouth. All of a sudden, she understood what her mother had been doing. She didn’t often speak about the concept of being a breeder in the City of Glass, but Dad had told her about it. Lana wasn’t even sure how much Dad understood. It sounded like an incredibly horrible life.

“You must invite them so that they can see you.” And that would need to be done before the disease ended her life. Dad never spoke of it, but Lana wasn’t stupid.

Her mother looked at her hands. “Not all are still alive.”

“The ones who are should come.”

“They might not want to see me.”

“They should be allowed to make that decision. Give Dad the names. He will tell them to come. I’m sure he will.”

“Someone here talking about me?”

Her father had come into the kitchen. He looked flustered, red-cheeked, and very tired. He sat down at the table and thanked the cook for giving him soup.

Lana repeated what she’d said to her mother.

He thought for a while. “It would be nice for you just to see them once, but inviting them here might be a little bit trickier than you think. Some of the men who hire breeders in the City of Glass are very high up in their aristocracy. The children themselves may not like to be reminded that they come from breeder background, or their families might be embarrassed to have the name of their breeder so publicly revealed.”

“You can try,” Lana said.

“Yes, we could.”

They ate for a bit.

Then her mother said, “How was this morning’s session?”

Dad sighed. “We have a lot to deal with.”

“Did they find out more about this poor man who died delivering the message from Arania?”

“The Aranians aren’t bluffing. They have a lot of troops stationed on the other side of the border. Several people have confirmed that. For now, they don’t appear to be doing anything.”

“I guess that’s good?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. The fact that they’re there at all worries me. And that they appear to have weapons based on sonorics. And that they are still not willing to engage in any kind of meaningful discussion with us.”

Lana thought of the turd in its little ornate box in the cabinet next to Dad’s office. Every child in Chevakia visited the doga and was told the story of Arania’s smelly reply to Chevakia’s efforts to reach out and forget about the past; and was taught that it was evidence that it was all right to ignore Arania, because they were rude and stubborn and refused to talk the doga and hey, we beat them badly in the last war, so why should we?

Probably Arania had been pretty angry during all that time. There hadn’t been an ambassador for a great many years.

“But let’s not worry ourselves too much about it today. Let’s talk about your trip.”

His face carried that expression that told Lana that he had to force himself to be cheerful and forget about the bad news.

But she told him about the itinerary Viki had sent her, and Dad told her about any of those places he had visited. In Watya, apparently, she should look out for the water towers and aqueducts that were a marvel of engineering. He had never been to Ysherra, but said that others had reported it as a small and tight-knit place, where the capital Tiverius was so far away as to be irrelevant and where it paid not to be too cocky.

He said, “A lot of the people in the north believe that meteorologists control the weather.”

And then they discussed customs and superstition, one of their favourite subjects. It felt just like the old days, when her mother was healthy and Lana had been at school.

They’d long since finished eating when there was a commotion in the hallway. A moment later, Viki came in. He wore sturdy trousers and a travel cloak, probably a little bit frumpier than he would appear in class.

His gaze sought out Lana. “Ready to go?”

“Yes, sure.” Lana rose nervously.

“Well, there you go, then,” her father said. “Into the big world.”

“Thank you for letting me go.” Lana hugged him and then her mother. She felt so thin and fragile.

“Take care out there,” her mother said. Her eyes glittered.

Lana went into the hall, where the luggage waited. Myra had put a sizeable parcel on top of Lana’s suitcase. Lana half-despaired at seeing it, but she knew it was full of nice edible goodies and would probably not make it to Watya.

Orsan took her big suitcase, and Lana her smaller overnight bag and the parcel, which was heavy enough.

She followed Viki down the path through the yard to the truck that waited in the street. Big clouds of steam drifted past the side, and Lana had to bat them away to climb into the cabin. The driver shut the door.

Her parents stood on the doorstep of the house, her mother in the chair, her father behind her with his hands on her shoulders. Lana waved and they waved back. The driver dropped the truck into gear and the house and her family slowly slid from view.

Lana had to blink a few times. She stared out the window, embarrassed that she would get emotional over something she had wanted for so long. But her parents looked so . . . lonely, and she was all they had. What if her mother died while she was away?

She swallowed hard a few times.

Slowly, the truck made its way through the stately tree-lined avenues of the city. It was autumn, and the golden sunlight cast the city in a warm glow.

The main station in Tiverius was a big sandstone building adjacent to the marketplace, not far from the doga. Lana had taken short train trips plenty of times, but she had always looked wistfully at those big engines with lots of carriages that went to other parts of the country, hoping that one day she could go on those trains. Sometimes the engines were dusty, sometimes their fronts were covered in bugs. There were always a lot of people around these trains, including station staff helping passengers board and loading mail bags.

And today, she was going on one of those trains and didn’t at all feel as glamorous as she had thought it would. In fact, it felt rather scary.

The activity on the platform appeared rather chaotic. There were lots of people with bags. The stationmaster was arguing with a man about the booking of a cabin, while the man’s family sat around on their suitcases, blocking the way for everyone else.

Viki used his status as chief meteorologist to interrupt that conversation and get the tickets checked. Lana waited for him.

Further down the platform was a lot of freight, including crates of fruit, potatoes and other produce, wrapped-up parts of an engine and many pallets of dusty white bags that looked like cushions. Big clouds of steam drifted from the engine over the platform.

“Come, we’re at the front,” Viki said.

Lana followed him, weaving between yet more families with lots of bags and children.

“What’s in all those white bags they were loading onto the train?”

“Where?”

“Behind us.”

Viki looked over his shoulder. His expression turned serious. “Those are old sonorics suits.”

“Why are they being taken to the north?” Way back before she was born, they used to stockpile these suits in all towns close to the borders with Peria, in case the sonorics barrier failed. Since the destruction of the machine in the City of Glass, the suits had been stored in army sheds, where they had gathered dust for twenty years.

“They are stored in the region as a safety precaution—ah, this is our carriage.”

It was painted green on the outside. A man was helping a woman with a long, frilly, utterly impractical dress up the narrow steps. When she had made it in, Viki jumped up and held his hand out to Lana.