82nd Day of Summer, 514 AV
Isana Lin glowered up at the looming mass of the districts, stretching above her like a madman's stone fingers, clutching desperately as though to drag the sky itself into their earthen embrace, and wondered when exactly she had become a teacher. Storms, but she was nervous. Balian she'd met, knew the young squire – her squire, a distant part of her brain cheerfully reminded her – by sight, even if she was nowhere near understanding him. Hiroe though, Hiroe was different. Little more than a name to her, slipped between Stanlisa's lips when the perpetually smiling sergeant had informed Isana that another squire would be joining her patrol this morning. Isana had snorted at the idea. Patrol? With a squire? If it was a lesson, call it what it was. Stanlisa had only given that infuriating grin and waved her away to prepare.
Which was exactly what Isana had done.
Mail hung over her shoulders, leather gardbrace strapped in place and sword slung at her hip. Not her usual arming sword, but it would have to do. The grip was digging into her hip and she tugged at the scabbard, adjusted it. Her spear rested against the wall beside her, point nuzzling into a crack in the mortar, edge of her shield resting on the ground ahead of her, arms folded across the top of it. Two other blades, cased in their scabbards, rested alongside the spear. A handful of familiar faces wandered the street before her, sword pins at their collars concealed beneath unseasonably heavy cloaks – none she recognised as Balian, mercifully -, exchanging conspirator's nods in the faint pre-dawn light before they vanished deeper into the winding catacomb of Syliras' streets with the distinct rustle of armour in motion. Yes, Isana had prepared carefully. Even so, she couldn't help but feel a twinge of nervousness as she searched the bare streets for some sign of her students. They weren't due to meet her yet, not until first light, but plans and preparations were unstable things, inclined to topple over and shatter into their component pieces at the slightest breath of wind.
She exhaled, slowly and deliberately, raked her eyes upwards, away from the confining press of the street. A glimpse of the sky was more valuable than gold in Syliras, where the districts themselves kept the residents safely locked away from daylight and the outside world both. A simple room with a window could set a woman back a week's food in coin – a quantity she could ill afford to spare, view or no.
Mithryn had been different. Distributed, fields scattering the surrounding countryside like water filling a pool, but not sprawling like the city was. If Mithryn's fields were a pool then Syliras itself was a dam. Buildings and people had flowed across the hollow of the city's mighty walls in centuries past, creeping into every dank corner, every available inch of ground and, when they had exhausted space beneath their feet, had crawled slowly skywards in towering districts so massive the architects had been forced to dot ventilation shafts throughout the city, winding through the rock like arteries, lest they all choke to death on the poison of their own stale breath.
A life by torchlight, some long-dead architect had reasoned, was surely a pittance to pay in exchange for peace from the dangers that lurked beyond the walls. Perhaps it was, but after three days scribbling on parchment in the false light of the archives – interrupted only by her dawn expeditions to the fighter's pit – Isana would have happily traded all that safety away for a view of the horizon without some stone hulk or another in the way.
Syna hung low in the sky, somewhere behind Bittern district opposite her, the goddess slowly staining the early-morning air the colour of spilt blood – but the air was crisp and cool in her throat, as yet unsullied by passage through the city's thousand gulping lungs. There was something special in the dawn of a new day, that strange, irrational hope that the future honestly, truly, could be different. Childish, undoubtedly, but the belief had never quite left her, and a woman had to hold on to something, didn't she? That would change soon enough, Isana knew, as the merchants dragged themselves from their feather beds, as sailors rolled precious loads of food, water, and steel aboard waiting boats, not least as other members of her own order emerged, sweating beneath their armour to face the new day, dragging the magic of a dawn down into the crushing bustle of reality. But for now, at least, she was as close to alone as one ever got in the city, back hard up against the stone of Dyres, watching a few bleary-eyed residents trudge past.
Isana did her best to look nonchalant, to keep her eyes from flickering back and forth across the road like a grain caught in a thunderstorm, felt them move anyway, and settled down to wait for the squires.
Which was exactly what Isana had done.
Mail hung over her shoulders, leather gardbrace strapped in place and sword slung at her hip. Not her usual arming sword, but it would have to do. The grip was digging into her hip and she tugged at the scabbard, adjusted it. Her spear rested against the wall beside her, point nuzzling into a crack in the mortar, edge of her shield resting on the ground ahead of her, arms folded across the top of it. Two other blades, cased in their scabbards, rested alongside the spear. A handful of familiar faces wandered the street before her, sword pins at their collars concealed beneath unseasonably heavy cloaks – none she recognised as Balian, mercifully -, exchanging conspirator's nods in the faint pre-dawn light before they vanished deeper into the winding catacomb of Syliras' streets with the distinct rustle of armour in motion. Yes, Isana had prepared carefully. Even so, she couldn't help but feel a twinge of nervousness as she searched the bare streets for some sign of her students. They weren't due to meet her yet, not until first light, but plans and preparations were unstable things, inclined to topple over and shatter into their component pieces at the slightest breath of wind.
She exhaled, slowly and deliberately, raked her eyes upwards, away from the confining press of the street. A glimpse of the sky was more valuable than gold in Syliras, where the districts themselves kept the residents safely locked away from daylight and the outside world both. A simple room with a window could set a woman back a week's food in coin – a quantity she could ill afford to spare, view or no.
Mithryn had been different. Distributed, fields scattering the surrounding countryside like water filling a pool, but not sprawling like the city was. If Mithryn's fields were a pool then Syliras itself was a dam. Buildings and people had flowed across the hollow of the city's mighty walls in centuries past, creeping into every dank corner, every available inch of ground and, when they had exhausted space beneath their feet, had crawled slowly skywards in towering districts so massive the architects had been forced to dot ventilation shafts throughout the city, winding through the rock like arteries, lest they all choke to death on the poison of their own stale breath.
A life by torchlight, some long-dead architect had reasoned, was surely a pittance to pay in exchange for peace from the dangers that lurked beyond the walls. Perhaps it was, but after three days scribbling on parchment in the false light of the archives – interrupted only by her dawn expeditions to the fighter's pit – Isana would have happily traded all that safety away for a view of the horizon without some stone hulk or another in the way.
Syna hung low in the sky, somewhere behind Bittern district opposite her, the goddess slowly staining the early-morning air the colour of spilt blood – but the air was crisp and cool in her throat, as yet unsullied by passage through the city's thousand gulping lungs. There was something special in the dawn of a new day, that strange, irrational hope that the future honestly, truly, could be different. Childish, undoubtedly, but the belief had never quite left her, and a woman had to hold on to something, didn't she? That would change soon enough, Isana knew, as the merchants dragged themselves from their feather beds, as sailors rolled precious loads of food, water, and steel aboard waiting boats, not least as other members of her own order emerged, sweating beneath their armour to face the new day, dragging the magic of a dawn down into the crushing bustle of reality. But for now, at least, she was as close to alone as one ever got in the city, back hard up against the stone of Dyres, watching a few bleary-eyed residents trudge past.
Isana did her best to look nonchalant, to keep her eyes from flickering back and forth across the road like a grain caught in a thunderstorm, felt them move anyway, and settled down to wait for the squires.
